American blues pianist and singer
POPULARITY
7 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
3 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
4 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
3 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
2 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
2 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
2 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
2 episodes with Sunnyland Slim
Intro Song – Smoky Greenwell, “Get Out and Vote”, Blues and the Power of Peace First Set - Freddie King, “Do The President Twist”, Taking Care of Business Byther Smith & The Night Riders, “President's Daughter”, Mississippi Kid Sonny Rhodes, “President Clinton”, The Blues Is My Best Friend Second Set - Albert Luandrew w/ Sunnyland Slim, “Be Careful How You Vote”, Earwig 16th Ann. Sampler Canned Heat w/ Gatemouth Brown, “Election Blues”, The Boogie House Tapes, Vol 3 Ben Rice and RB Stone, “Hey Politician”, Out of the Box Third Set - John Primer, “Inflation Blues”, Stuff You Got To Watch The Nick Moss Band feat. Dennis Gruenling, “The High Cost of Low Living”, The High Cost of Low Living Guitar Shorty, “Cost of Livin'”, We The People Fourth Set - Elvin Bishop's Big Fun Trio, “Something Smells Funky ‘Round Here”, Big Fun Trio A.C. Reed feat. Albert Collins, “The President Plays'”, Junk Food Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, “Dump That Chump”, You Asked For It…. Live!
Today's show features music performed by B.B. King and Sunnyland Slim
ערן סבאג
Sam Burckhardt ist einer der erfolgreichsten Bluesmusiker der Schweiz. Seit vierzig Jahren lebt er in den USA, wo er mit den besten Musikern Chicagos zusammengespielt hat. Jetzt ist er für kurze Zeit in der Schweiz und macht auch einen Zwischenhalt in «Musik für einen Gast». Geboren wird Sam Burckhardt als Samuel Balthasar Burckhardt in Sursee. Sein Vater arbeitet damals als wissenschaftlicher Assistent an der Vogelwarte Sempach. Zwei Jahre später kehrt die Familie nach Basel zurück, wo Samuel mit der Musik in Kontakt kommt. Bei der Knabenkantorei (damals «Singbuebe» genannt) erhält er eine klassische Gesangsausbildung, beim Blues-, Jazz- und Soulmusiker Chester Gill lernt er Schlagzeug und Saxofon. Mit 14 spielt er im Berner Gaskessel mit dem amerikanischen Bluesmusiker Eddie Boyd zusammen, was ihn dank eines schönen Zufalls auch zu Sunnyland Slim führt. Dieser wiederum holt den mittlerweile 25-jährigen Saxofonisten nach Chicago und in seine Band. Unterdessen sind vierzig Jahre vergangen. Aus dem Ethnologiestudenten Samuel Burckhardt ist der Bluesmusiker Sam Burckhardt geworden, der eine höchsterfolgreiche Karriere gemacht hat und mittlerweile auch das amerikanische Bürgerrecht besitzt. Von seinem langen Weg von Basel nach Michigan, wo er mittlerweile lebt, erzählt Sam Burckhardt im Gespräch mit Gastgeber Michael Luisier. Erstsendung: 21. November 2021
Mark talks too long time friend and midwest blues guitar legend Billy Flynn. Billy Flynn was born in Green Bay, Wisconsin.[1][3] In 1970, a local blues club opened and Flynn was inspired by the music provided there by Luther Allison, Johnny Littlejohn and Mighty Joe Young. Flynn was fortunate to be spotted playing outside the venue by Jimmy Dawkins, who arranged for Flynn to play with him on stage.[4] Flynn joined Dawkins's backing band in 1975, and he played and toured with them until the end of the decade.Flynn also worked locally during this period and played alongside Sunnyland Slim. In the early part of the 1980s, Flynn was a member of the touring ensemble Jim Liban and the Futuramics.[4] In the late 1980s, he joined the Legendary Blues Band. He also played with Mississippi Heat. In addition to his own work and works mentioned later, he has worked and recorded with Bryan Lee, Little Smokey Smothers, Mark Hummel, Willie Kent, Snooky Pryor, Big Bill Morganfield, John Brim, Jody Williams, Little Arthur Duncan, Deitra Farr, and Billy Boy Arnold. Please SUBSCRIBE to Mark Hummel's Harmonica Party YouTube Channel. Mark Hummel Accidental Productions
One of the elder statesmen of Chicago blues, bass player extraordinaire and vocalist Bob Stroger talks about his new album "That's My Name" and shares memories from his long and storied career in the blues, playing with Otis Rush, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Rogers and many more.
Playlist: Snatch It Back and Hold It – Junior Wells; Chicago Style – Dave Specter, con Brother John Kattke, voz; Rollin' Stone – Muddy Waters; All Your Love – Otis Rush; I Am the Blues – Sunnyland Slim; It Serves Me Right to Suffer – Jimmy Dawkins, con Mighty Joe Young, gtr.; My Love Depends on You – Otis Spann, con Peter Green, gtr.; Message in Blue – Dave Specter; I Found a Love – Dave Specter, con Otis Clay, voz; Funkified Outta Space, The Stinger – Dave Specter; Jefferson Stomp – Dave Specter, con Bob Corritore, armónica; The Spectifyin' Samba – Dave Specter; Opus de Swamp – Dave Specter, con Bob Corritore, armónica. Escuchar audio
Willie Nelson "Phases and Stages / Pick Up the Tempo / Phases and Stages (Theme)"Eilen Jewell "It's Your Voodoo Working"Lucero "Went Looking for Warren Zevon's Los Angeles"Warren Zevon "Keep Me In Your Heart"Steve Earle "Little Rock 'N' Roller"Justin Townes Earle "Memphis in the Rain"Patterson Hood "Come Back Little Star"Vic Chesnutt "Panic Pure"Valerie June "Summer's End"St. Louis Jimmy "Trying To Change My Ways"Sunnyland Slim "Orphan Boy Blues"Otis Redding "Let Me Come On Home"Margo Price "Sweet Revenge"Slobberbone "Trust Jesus"The Black Keys "Crawling Kingsnake"Brandi Carlile "Broken Horses"Dolly Parton "After the Gold Rush"Doc & Merle Watson "Milk Cow Blues"Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis "My Bucket's Got A Hole In It"Kid Thomas & The Original Algiers Stompers "I Believe I Can Make It By Myself"Memphis Minnie "Killer Diller Blues"Kitty Wells "Queen Of Honky Tonk Street"Big Mama Thornton "Born Under A Bad Sign"Marie/Lepanto "Gramps And Grandma"Ernest Tubb "My Hillbilly Baby"Curtis Harding "Explore"Buffalo Nichols "Living Hell"Ry Cooder "Nitty Gritty Mississippi"Leon Russell "Jesus On My Side"Old 97's "Murder (Or a Heart Attack)"Gillian Welch "Tear My Stillhouse Down"Patsy Cline "Ain't No Wheels On This Ship"Drag the River "Embrace the Sound"Hayes Carll "Help Me Remember"Ray Wylie Hubbard "Cooler-N-Hell"Jolie Holland "Old Fashioned Morphine"Carla Thomas "Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)"Sly & The Family Stone "Sing a Simple Song "Nina Simone "Break Down And Let It All Out"Lucinda Williams "Pineola"Al Green "I Can't Stop"Funkadelic "One Nation Under A Groove"The Mynabirds "Numbers Don't Lie"Aretha Franklin "See Saw"
Sam Burckhardt ist einer der erfolgreichsten Bluesmusiker der Schweiz. Seit vierzig Jahren lebt er in den USA, wo er mit den besten Musikern Chicagos zusammengespielt hat. Jetzt ist er für kurze Zeit in der Schweiz und macht auch einen Zwischenhalt in «Musik für einen Gast». Geboren wird Sam Burckhardt als Samuel Balthasar Burckhardt in Sursee. Sein Vater arbeitet damals als wissenschaftlicher Assistent an der Vogelwarte Sempach. Zwei Jahre später kehrt die Familie nach Basel zurück, wo Samuel mit der Musik in Kontakt kommt. Bei der Knabenkantorei (damals «Singbuebe» genannt) erhält er eine klassische Gesangsausbildung, beim Blues-, Jazz- und Soulmusiker Chester Gill lernt er Schlagzeug und Saxofon. Mit 14 spielt er im Berner Gaskessel mit dem amerikanischen Bluesmusiker Eddie Boyd zusammen, was ihn dank eines schönen Zufalls auch zu Sunnyland Slim führt. Dieser wiederum holt den mittlerweile 25-jährigen Saxofonisten nach Chicago und in seine Band. Unterdessen sind vierzig Jahre vergangen. Aus dem Ethnologiestudenten Samuel Burckhardt ist der Bluesmusiker Sam Burckhardt geworden, der eine höchsterfolgreiche Karriere gemacht hat und mittlerweile auch das amerikanische Bürgerrecht besitzt. Von seinem langen Weg von Basel nach Michigan, wo er mittlerweile lebt, erzählt Sam Burckhardt im Gespräch mit Gastgeber Michael Luisier.
Sunnyland Slim & Little Brother Montgomery - 1989 - Chicago Blues Session3 - Sunnyland Slim - Prison Bound Miss Lady Blues_ Moe Betta BluesMoe Betta Blues2 She Ain't Me Miss Lady Blues_ Moe Betta BluesMoe Betta Blues6 Loving You Miss Lady Blues_ Moe Betta BluesMoe Betta Blues1 Back It Up With That Lip Deborah Coleman - 11. Deserted Highway The Porkroll Project4 Crescent Moon_ Papa Didn't Raise Me Right The Porkroll Project11 A Taste Of Malt Liquor_ Papa Didn't Raise Me Right Elly Wininger11_Range In My Kitchen _The Blues Never End Tony Holiday - Porch Sessions Vol 211_Find Me When The Sun Goes Down Featuring Rae Gordon_ Paul Lamb And The Kingsnakes - Hole In The Wall mr lambs groove walk Homesick James & The Hypnotics - 1992 - Sweet Home Tennessee3 - Crawlin'kingsnake Martha Fields - Dancing Shadows 201811 Fare Thee Well Blues The Rolling Stones5 - The Rolling Stones - The Lost Sessions Vol. 1 Sweet Black Angel [Japan Bootleg]10.Potted Shrimp (Instrumental Tony Fazio - Sad and Blue The Veldman Brothers - Livin' By the Day (2014) What Do You Know Nighthawks - Tryin' To Get To You7 - Rain Down Tears Marshall LawrenceThe Morning After9 Dessert Table Blues Marshall Lawrence The Morning After Bare Bones Boogie Band - I'd Rather Go Blind The Dave Muskett Acoustic Blues BandLive at the Slippery Noodle Inn - She Can't Give Me the Blues David G Smith - Who Cares10 - Just To Feel The Wind Lawrence LeboOld School Girl1 You've Got A Secret Marc Breitfelder & Georg SchroeterSugar and Spice1 - Sugar And Spice David Ruffin - 5 - (1973)4. (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want To Be Right Steve Vai - - Fire Garden MP314 - Brother Jimmy Smith Blue Bash 10 - Soft Winds (Alt. Take Whitey Somers - The Call Of The Blues 04. A Free Man Marshall Tucker Band – Set You Free
Mark sits down with blues guitar legend Steve Freund to talk about his career and blues history. Steve began his career in Chicago with Hubert Sumlin, Lee Jackson, Homesick James, Louis Myers, and many others. He spent two years working with Big Walter Horton and Floyd Jones, and in 1978 he became Sunnyland Slim's main guitarist. Freund is the consummate piano accompanist working with Pinetop Perkins, Jimmy Walker, Henry Gray, Erwin Helfer and many more. Steve spent nine years working with harmonica legend James Cotton. Steve tours internationally and has played with and opens shows for Boz Scaggs. Special Thanks to Bob Corritore for his photographs Steve Freund's Website Mark Hummel's Website Produced by Accidental Productions For a video version please visit Mark Hummel's Harmonica Party on YouTube
Southern feel, soul, rhythm and blues, country, rock & roll, greasy honky tonks; these things come to mind when thinking about Grammy-award winning keyboardist, Billy Earheart. He grew up in Tullahoma, Tennessee (an hour south of Nashville), and from there went to Muscle Shoals, Knoxville, Memphis, Nashville and currently in North Mississippi, playing with an impressive list of artists along the way.Billy is also an original member with the Amazing Rhythm Aces, (46 years),and also has played with; Bocephus Hank Williams Jr(21 years), Al Green, B.B. King, Memphis Slim, Waylon Jennings, Eddie Hinton, Billy F.Gibbons, Reggie Young, Phineas Newborn, Earl Gaines, Roscoe Shelton, Little Larry LaDon, Jimmy Church, Fred Sanders, Kid Rock, Dickie Betts, Ace Cannon, Gatemouth Brown, Willie Cobbs, Kris Kristofferson, Sammy Hagar, Jimmy Buffet, Glen Frey, Rufus Thomas, Leslie West ,Otis Clay, Homesick James , Delbert McClinton, Bobby Rush, Eric Gales, Mark “Muleman” Massey, Kingfish(Christone Ingram), Sunnyland Slim, Watermelon Slim ,Johnny Woods, Tommy Talton, David Hood, Barry Beckett, Roger Hawkins, Jimmy Johnson (Muscle Shoals Swampers),Rev.John Wilkins, Big Jack Johnson , Rodney Crowell, Jamey Johnson, Warren Haynes, Robert Bilbo Walker, Vassar Clements, Teenie Hodges, James Burton, Alan Jackson, Fred Ford, Garry Burnside , DuWayne Burnside, Cedric Burnside, Dave and Robert Kimbrough, Johnny Jones, Charles Wigg Walker, The Decoys, Travis Wammack, Spooner Oldham, Roland Janes, Jimmy Hall & Wet Willie, Merle Kilgore, Jumpin Gene Simmons, Fingers Taylor, Ray Benson and more… Billy is plays a Roland 88 key digital PF-50 model piano and a; Hammond XK-3c organ Proud to be a Hammond endorsee.Billy started with a Farfisa Compact in 1966. He moved to a Hammond M-2 and the big Hammond C-3 (1959 model). When he played with the Amazing Rhythm Aces in the '70s he played the Hammond C-3 as well as a six-foot Yamaha grand piano, and Wurlitzer electric piano. Billy also has a 50's Wurlitzer electric piano 120, and 2 vintage accordions, and three Leslies, along with two old upright pianos and a pump organ.Musical Highpoints and AwardsBilly won several award with the Amazing Rhythm Aces. The group was nominated for a Grammy for "Best New Artist" in 1975. They won the Grammy for Country Group in 1976 for their recording of "The End Is Not In Sight." That same year, they won the Cash Box Award for "Best Progressive Group." Other honors with the Aces include several ASCAP awards, as well as receiving the "Key to the City of Memphis" in 1976. The Aces also won a gold record for "Goin South," a double CD compilation of Southern music.One of Billy's special honors was the proclamation by Shelby County Mayor William Morris of June 28, 1985 as "Billy Earheart Day" in Memphis, Tennessee!The awards continued with Billy's association with Bocephus. The CMA presented Hank Williams, Jr. and The Bama Band with two video awards: for "My Name is Bocephus" in 1986, and for "Young Country" in 1987. 1989 brought an Emmy for the Rowdy Friends Theme from "Monday Night Football." And in 1989, the documentary and live video featuring Hank Jr. and the band, "Full Access" was certified platinum. Billy also played on the gold records Hank Live, Wild Streak, Greatest hits 3,and America the way I see it.
Show 137 – Recorded 7-3-21 – This podcast features 12 outstanding blues artist groups and 12 excellent performances to enjoy. And, Mr Ted Reed tells us about his and a friend's trip to discover, meet, film and record a group of early blues legends in 1970. Our talented featured artists are: Furry Lewis, Scott Dunbar, Robert Pete Williams, Big Joe Williams, James Cotton and Elvin Bishop, Dr Ross, Reverend Robert Wilkins, Sunnyland Slim, Memphis Minnie, Mud Morganfield, Ms Silvia Travis, Diunna Greenleaf.
LITTLE HAT is not a person, it's a band from The Netherlands that plays a their own furious and raw version of blues and early rock 'n' roll. Like kindred spirits Jesus on a Tortilla from Milan (see No Border Blues #3), they are inspired by the deep cuts of obscure blues pioneers such as Joe Hill Louis and Sunnyland Slim, but play with a heaping dose of frantic energy. Little Hat employs the rare trio instrumentation of harmonica /vocals (Machiel Meijers), guitar (Willem van Dullemen) and drums (Paolo de Stitger). Little Hat is also intergenerational: Paolo's in his 20s, Machiel's not yet 40, and Willem recently turned 70! Machiel and Willem were in the long-running and popular Dutch blues band Stackhouse, but they are finding a new freedom with the "three-man-one-man-band" approach of Little Hat. Sometimes it sounds to me like Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers with harmonica! Little Victor, who we've interviewed in Episode 14, produced Little Hat's latest CD "Wine, Whiskey and Wimmen" for the German label Rhythm Bomb Records. The purity of their vintage tones together with the forceful sonic attack of the recording proves this to be a fruitful pairing. You can find out more, and purchase their CD, at www.littlehatband.com. Take a blues journey with No Border Blues, the only blues podcast focused on international blues artists and hidden blues scenes around the world. Delmark recording artist Johnny Burgin and producer Stephanie Tice shine a spotlight on notable international blues performers, discuss the blues scenes in their home countries, and present intimate and exclusive musical performances. Stef couldn't make this interview, sorry!-- but she will be back in the next episode. Sponsored by Chicago Blues Network, bringing Chicago Blues to the world. noborderblues.com - chicagobluesnetwork.com - johnnyburgin.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Monday Blues again!!! Aquest dilluns ens centrarem en el piano, en concret en les llegendes que han format part dins del Blues d’aquest increíble instrument. Desde els pares del Boogie, el Sr. Yancey, passant pels icones del Blues a Xicago, com Otis Spann o Sunnyland Slim, fins els més rockers com Johnnie Johnson, fins i […] The post Blues Barrelhouse 22/03/2021 first appeared on Ripollet Ràdio.
Show 103 – Recorded 10-31-20 This podcast features 12 outstanding blues artists and 12 great performances to enjoy. These songs were recorded from the late 1929 – 2011. Our featured artists are: Sunnyland Slim, Etta Baker, Sonny Terry and Bownie McGhee, Earl Hooker, Marcia Ball, Cephas and Wiggins, Blind Willie McTell, Samantha Fish, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Dewey Corley, Susan Tedeschi.
Show 103 – Recorded 10-31-20 This podcast features 12 outstanding blues artists and 12 great performances to enjoy. These songs were recorded from the late 1929 – 2011. Our featured artists are: Sunnyland Slim, Etta Baker, Sonny Terry and Bownie McGhee, Earl Hooker, Marcia Ball, Cephas and Wiggins, Blind Willie McTell, Samantha Fish, Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Dewey Corley, Susan Tedeschi.
Show 91 – Recorded 8-1-20 This podcast features a broad range of outstanding blues artists. We have 13 blues artists providing 13 great songs to enjoy. These songs were recorded from 1949 – 2020. Our featured artists are: Libby Rae Watson, Johnny Winter, Memphis Minnie and Sunnyland Slim, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Lee Williams, JJ Gray and Mofro, Mississippi Joe Callicott, Cephas & Wiggins, John Lee Hooker, Bobby Rush, Henry Townsend, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Piano Red.
Show 91 – Recorded 8-1-20 This podcast features a broad range of outstanding blues artists. We have 13 blues artists providing 13 great songs to enjoy. These songs were recorded from 1949 – 2020. Our featured artists are: Libby Rae Watson, Johnny Winter, Memphis Minnie and Sunnyland Slim, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Lee Williams, JJ Gray and Mofro, Mississippi Joe Callicott, Cephas & Wiggins, John Lee Hooker, Bobby Rush, Henry Townsend, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Piano Red.
Steve Freund takes us on his deep blues journey from his early days growing up in New York, moving to Chicago in the 1970s where he played, toured and recorded with an amazing array of artists including Sunnyland Slim, Big Walter Horton, Luther Allison, winning a Grammy with Koko Taylor, to his current home in California where he’s been a fixture on the West Coast blues scene. Hope you enjoy this shelter in place, Blues From the Inside In, phone interview.
Bill Blue (Enough Blues To Give You The Blues); Clare Free (Little Miss Jealousy); Bywater Call (Over And Over); Jazz Gillum (Down South Blues); Terry 'Harmonica' Bean (I'm Going Back Down South); Ben Rice and RB Stone (Easy Rollin' Down The Road); Brian Fink (Rushin' Round); Cephas and Wiggins (Railroad Bill); Hudspeth and Taylor (Low Down Dealer Man); Mary Dixon (Daddy, You're A Low Down Man); Howlin' Wolf (Going Back Home); Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Kansas City Red, Big Walter Horton and Floyd Jones (I'm Going Back Home); Liz Mandeville (Keep On Workin'); Laurie Morvan (No Working During Drinking Hours); Kat Pearson (Nothing Left To Lose); Bing Futch (Listen Closely Mama).
Al programa d’avui el piano torna a ser el protagonista. Champion Jack Dupree, Sunnyland Slim o Oscar Peterson ens acompanyaran a la travesía d’avui. Farem honor al nom del programa, Barrelhouse, on el piano era un element imprescindible. A més tindrem una petita entrevista amb el pianista Lluís Coloma, on es farà una presentació del […]
Show 67 – Recorded 2-15-20 This podcast provides 13 performances of blues songs performed by 13 blues artists or groups whose tremendous talent is highlighted here. Performances range from 1937 to 2019. The blues artists featured are: John Primer, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Big Jack Johnson, Kim Wilson, Pinetop Perkins, Speckled Red, Paul Butterfield, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Libby Rae Watson, Muddy Waters, Sammy Lawhorn, Pee Wee Madison, Calvin Fuzz Jones, Willie Big Eyes Smith, Paul Oscher, Robert Johnson, Lucinda Williams, Little Walter, Baby Face LeRoy Foster, Shy Perry, Bill Perry, Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, Ernest Lawlers, Ernest Big Crawford and Rory Block.
Show 67 – Recorded 2-15-20 This podcast provides 13 performances of blues songs performed by 13 blues artists or groups whose tremendous talent is highlighted here. Performances range from 1937 to 2019. The blues artists featured are: John Primer, Jesse Mae Hemphill, Big Jack Johnson, Kim Wilson, Pinetop Perkins, Speckled Red, Paul Butterfield, Geoff Muldaur, Maria Muldaur, Libby Rae Watson, Muddy Waters, Sammy Lawhorn, Pee Wee Madison, Calvin Fuzz Jones, Willie Big Eyes Smith, Paul Oscher, Robert Johnson, Lucinda Williams, Little Walter, Baby Face LeRoy Foster, Shy Perry, Bill Perry, Jimmy Rogers, Sunnyland Slim, Ernest Lawlers, Ernest Big Crawford and Rory Block.
He's written books on New Orleans icon Ernie K-Doe and the Zydeco culture of south Louisiana. He spearheaded the career revival of the Hackberry Ramblers, producing and playing drums with the Cajun band for eighteen years culminating in their Grammy nomination after 70 years together. Ben is attracted to offbeat characters and cultural ephemera, so of course he winds up in the Ring Room with the Troubled Men. Topics include the Super Bowl, Tom Flores' Hall of Fame snub, corrupt institutions, a Bible reading, a cyberattack, a book plug, a Christmas commercial, Rico Watts, “White Boy, Black Boy,” Clifton Chenier, “Jole Blon,” string bands, MTV Live, a neighborhood threat, disaster tourism, the Grand Ole Opry, a last road trip, a Beach Boys protest, liner notes, Chicago blues time, Sunnyland Slim, Jazz Fest interviews, losing peers, a false memory, publishing deals, false documents, a missing finger, and much more. Support the podcast by contributing to the Cocktail Fund in the show links. Subscribe, review, and rate (*****) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most podcast aggregators. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Outro music: “Bill's Boogie Woogie” by Boogie Bill Webb and “Poor Hobo” by the Hackberry Ramblers from the album “Deep Water”
He’s written books on New Orleans icon Ernie K-Doe and the Zydeco culture of south Louisiana. He spearheaded the career revival of the Hackberry Ramblers, producing and playing drums with the Cajun band for eighteen years culminating in their Grammy nomination after 70 years together. Ben is attracted to offbeat characters and cultural ephemera, so of course he winds up in the Ring Room with the Troubled Men. Topics include the Super Bowl, Tom Flores’ Hall of Fame snub, corrupt institutions, a Bible reading, a cyberattack, a book plug, a Christmas commercial, Rico Watts, “White Boy, Black Boy,” Clifton Chenier, “Jole Blon,” string bands, MTV Live, a neighborhood threat, disaster tourism, the Grand Ole Opry, a last road trip, a Beach Boys protest, liner notes, Chicago blues time, Sunnyland Slim, Jazz Fest interviews, losing peers, a false memory, publishing deals, false documents, a missing finger, and much more. Support the podcast by contributing to the Cocktail Fund in the show links. Subscribe, review, and rate (*****) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most podcast aggregators. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Outro music: “Bill’s Boogie Woogie” by Boogie Bill Webb and “Poor Hobo” by the Hackberry Ramblers from the album “Deep Water”
Welcome to episode twenty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at The Moonglows and “Sincerely”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. For the background on Charlie Fuqua, see episode six, on the Ink Spots. There are no books on the Moonglows, but as always with vocal groups of the fifties, Marv Goldberg has an exhaustively-researched page from which I got most of the information about them. The information on Alan Freed comes from Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson. And this compilation contains every recording by every lineup of Moonglows and Moonlighters, apart from the brief 1970s reunion. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [13 seconds of Intro from a recording of Alan Freed: “Hello, everybody, how you all? This is Alan Freed, the old King of the Moondoggers, and a hearty welcome to all our thousands of friends in Northern Ohio, Ontario Canada, Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Long about eleven thirty, fifteen minutes from now, we’ll be joining the Moondog Network…”] Chess Records is one of those labels, like Sun or Stax or PWL, which defined a whole genre. And in the case of Chess, the genre it defined was the electric Chicago blues. People like Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon all cut some of their most important recordings for the Chess label. I remember when I was just starting to buy records as a child, decades after the events we’re talking about, I knew before I left primary school that Chess, like Sun, was one of the two record labels that consistently put out music that I liked. And yet when it started out, Chess Records was just one of dozens of tiny little indie blues labels, like Modern, or RPM, or King Records, or Duke or Peacock, many of which were even putting out records by the same people who were recording for Chess. So this episode is actually part one of a trilogy, and over the next three episodes, we’re going to talk about how Chess ended up being the one label that defined that music in the eyes of many listeners, and how that music fed into early rock and roll. And today we’re also going to talk about how it ended up being influential in the formation of another of those important record labels. And to talk about that, we’re going to talk about Harvey Fuqua [Foo-kwah]. Yes, Fuqua. Even though we talked about his uncle, Charlie Fuqua [Foo-kway], back in the episode on the Ink Spots, apparently Harvey pronounced his name differently from his uncle. As you might imagine, having an uncle in the most important black vocal group in history gave young Harvey Fuqua quite an impetus, even though the two of them weren’t close. Fuqua started a duo with his friend Bobby Lester after they both got out of the military. Fuqua would play piano, and they would both sing. The two of them had a small amount of success, touring the South, but then shortly after their first tour Fuqua had about the worst thing possible happen to him — there was a fire, and both his children died in it. Understandably, he didn’t want to stay in Louisville Kentucky, where he’d been raising his family, so he and his wife moved to Cleveland. When he got to Cleveland, he met up again with an old friend from his military days, Danny Coggins. The two of them started performing together with a bass singer, Prentiss Barnes, under the name The Crazy Sounds. The style they were performing in was called “vocalese”, and it’s a really odd style of jazz singing that’s… the easiest way to explain it is the opposite of scat singing. In scat, you improvise a new melody with nonsense lyrics [demonstrates] — that’s the standard form of jazz singing, other than just singing the song straight. It’s what Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald or whoever would do. In vocalese, on the other hand, you do the opposite. You come up with proper lyrics, not just nonsense syllables, and you put them to a pre-recorded melody. The twist is that the pre-recorded melody you choose is a melody that’s already been improvised by an instrumentalist. So for example, you could take Coleman Hawkins’ great sax solo on “Body and Soul”: [Excerpt: Coleman Hawkins, “Body and Soul”] Hawkins improvised that melody line, and it was a one-off performance — every other time he played the song he’d play it differently. But Eddie Jefferson, who is credited as the inventor of vocalese, learned Hawkins’ solo, added words, and sang this: [Excerpt: Eddie Jefferson, “Body and Soul”] The Crazy Sounds performed this kind of music as a vocal trio for a while, but their sound was missing something, and eventually Fuqua travelled down to Kentucky and persuaded Bobby Lester to move to Cleveland and join the Crazy Sounds. They became a four-piece, and slowly started writing their own new material in a more R&B style. They performed together a little, and eventually auditioned at a club called the Loop, where they were heard by a blues singer called Al “Fats” Thomas. Thomas apparently recorded for several labels, but this is the only one of his records I can find a copy of anywhere, on the Chess subsidiary Checker, from right around the time we’re talking about in 1952: [Excerpt: Al “Fats” Thomas, “Baby Please No No”] Fats Thomas was very impressed by the Crazy Sounds, and immediately phoned his friend, the DJ Alan Freed. Alan Freed is a difficult character to explain, and his position in rock and roll history is a murky one. He was the first superstar DJ, and he was the person who more than anyone else made the phrase “rock and roll” into a term for a style of music, rather than, as it had been, just a phrase that was used in some of that music. Freed had not started out as a rhythm and blues or rock and roll DJ, and in fact had no great love for the music when he started playing it on his show. He was a lover of classical music — particularly Wagner, whose music he loved so much that he named one of his daughters Sieglinde. But he named his first daughter Alana, which shows his other great love, which was for himself. Freed had been a DJ for several years when he was first introduced to rhythm and blues music, and he’d played a mixture of big band music and light classical, depending on what the audience wanted. But then, in 1951, something changed. Freed met Leo Mintz, the owner of a record shop named Record Rendezvous, in a bar. Mintz discovered that Freed was a DJ and took him to the shop. Freed later mythologised this moment, as he did a lot of his life, by talking about how he was shocked to see white teenagers dancing to music made by black people, and he had a sort of Damascene conversion and immediately decided to devote his show to rhythm and blues. The reality is far more prosaic. Mintz, whose business actually mostly sold to black people at this point, decided that if there was a rhythm and blues radio show then it would boost business to his shop, especially if Mintz paid for the radio show and so bought all the advertising on it. He took Freed to the shop to show him that there was indeed an audience for that kind of music, and Freed was impressed, but said that he didn’t know anything about rhythm and blues music. Mintz said that that didn’t matter. Mintz would pick the records — they’d be the ones that he wanted his customers to buy — and tell Freed what to play. All Freed had to do was to play the ones he was told and everything would work out fine. The music Mintz had played for Freed was, according to Freed later, people like LaVern Baker — who had not yet become at all well known outside Detroit and Chicago at the time — but Mintz set about putting together selections of records that Freed should play. Those records were mostly things with gospel-sounding vocals, a dance beat, or honking saxophones, and Freed found that his audiences responded astonishingly well to it. Freed would often interject during records, and would bang his fists on the table or other objects in time to the beat, including a cowbell that he had on his desk — apparently some of his listeners would be annoyed when they bought the records he played to find out half the sounds they’d heard weren’t on the record at all. Freed took the stage name “Moondog”, after a blind New York street musician and outsider artist of that name. Freed’s theme song for his radio show was “Moondog Symphony”, by Moondog, a one-man-band performance credited to “Moondog (by himself) playing drums, maracas, claves, gourds, hollow legs, Chinese block and cymbals.” [Excerpt: “Moondog Symphony” by Moondog] When Fats Thomas got the Crazy Sounds an audition with Freed, Freed was impressed enough that he offered them a management contract. Being managed by the biggest DJ in the city was obviously a good idea, so they took him up on that, and took his advice about how to make themselves more commercial, including changing their name to emphasise the connection to Freed. They became first the Moonpuppies and then the Moonglows. Freed set up his own record label, Champagne Records, and released the Moonglows’ first single, “I Just Can’t Tell No Lie”: [Excerpt, “I Just Can’t Tell No Lie”, the Moonglows] According to Freed’s biographer John A. Jackson, Freed provided additional percussion on that song, hitting a telephone book in time with the rhythm as he would on his show. I don’t hear any percussion on there other than the drum kit, but maybe you can, if you have better ears than me. This was a song that had been written by the Moonglows themselves, but when the record came out, both sides were credited to Al Lance — which was a pseudonym for Alan Freed. And so the DJ who was pushing their record on the radio was also their manager, and the owner of the record company, and the credited songwriter. Unsurprisingly, then, Freed promoted “I Just Can’t Tell No Lie” heavily on his radio show, but it did nothing anywhere outside of Cleveland and the immediately surrounding area. Danny Coggins quit the group, fed up with their lack of success, and he was replaced by a singer who variously went under the names Alex Graves, Alex Walton, Pete Graves, and Pete Walton. Freed closed down Champagne Records. For a time it looked like the Moonglows’ career was going to have peaked with their one single, as Freed signed another vocal group, the Coronets, and got them signed to Chess Records in Chicago. Chess was a blues label, which had started in 1947 as Aristocrat Records, but in 1948 it was bought out by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess, who had emigrated from Poland as children and Anglicised their names. Their father was in the liquor business during the Prohibition era, which in Chicago meant he was involved with Al Capone, and in their twenties the Chess brothers had started running nightclubs in the black area of Chicago. Chess, at its start, had the artists who had originally recorded for Aristocrat — people like Muddy Waters and Sunnyland Slim, and they also licensed records made by Sam Phillips in Memphis, and because of that put out early recordings by Howlin’ Wolf, before just poaching Wolf for their own label, and Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”. By 1954, thanks largely to their in-house bass player and songwriter Willie Dixon, Chess had become known as the home of electric Chicago blues, and were putting out classic after classic in that genre. But they were still interested in putting out other styles of black music too, and were happy to sign up doo-wop groups. The Coronets put out a single, “Nadine”, on Chess, which did very well. The credited writer was Alan Freed: [Excerpt: “Nadine”, the Coronets] The Coronets’ follow-up single did less well, though, and Chess dropped them. But Freed had been trying for some time to make a parallel career as a concert promoter, and indeed a few months before he signed the Moonglows to a management contract he had put on what is now considered the first major rock and roll concert — the Moondog Coronation Ball, at the Cleveland Arena. That show had been Freed’s first inkling of just how popular he and the music he was playing were becoming — twenty thousand people tried to get into the show, even though the arena only had a capacity of ten thousand, and the show had to be cancelled after the first song by the first performer, because it was becoming unsafe to continue. But Freed put on further shows at the arena, with better organisation, and in August 1953 he put on “the Big Rhythm and Blues Show”. This featured Fats Domino and Big Joe Turner, and the Moonglows were also put on the bill. As a result of their appearance on the show, they got signed to Chance Records, a small label whose biggest act was the doo-wop group The Flamingos. Freed didn’t own this label of course, but by this time he’d got into the record distribution business, and the distribution company he co-owned was Chance’s distributor in the Cleveland area. The other co-owner was the owner of Chance Records, and Freed’s brother was the distributor’s vice-president and in charge of running it. The Moonglows’ first single on Chance, a Christmas single, did nothing in the charts, but they followed it with a rather unusual choice. “Secret Love” was a hit for Doris Day, from the soundtrack of her film “Calamity Jane”: [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Secret Love”] In the context of the film, which has a certain amount of what we would now call queerbaiting, that song can be read as a song about lesbianism or bisexuality. But that didn’t stop a lot of male artists covering it for other markets. We’ve talked before about how popular songs would be recorded in different genres, and so Day’s pop version was accompanied by Slim Whitman’s country version and by this by the Moonglows: [Excerpt: the Moonglows, “Secret Love”] Unfortunately, a fortnight after the Moonglows released their version, the Orioles, who were a much more successful doo-wop group, released their own record of the song, and the two competed for the same market. However, “Secret Love” did well enough, given a promotional push by Freed, that it became apparent that the Moonglows could have a proper career. It sold over a hundred thousand copies, but then the next few records on Chance failed to sell, and Chance closed down when their biggest act, the Flamingos, moved first to Parrot Records, and then quickly on to Chess. It seemed like everything was against the Moonglows, but they were about to get a big boost, thanks in part to a strike. WINS radio in New York had been taken over at a rock-bottom price by an investment consortium who wanted to turn the money-losing station into a money-maker. It had a powerful transmitter, and if they could boost listenership they would almost certainly be able to sell it on at a massive profit. One of the first things the new owners did was to sack their house band — they weren’t going to pay musicians any more, as live music was too expensive. This caused the American Federation of Musicians to picket the station, which was expected and understandable. But WINS also had the broadcast rights to the New York Yankees games — indeed, the ball games were the only really popular thing that the station had. And so the AFM started to picket Yankee Stadium too. On the week of the starting game for what looked to be the Yankees’ sixth World Series win in a row. That game would normally have had the opening ball thrown by the Mayor of New York, but the Mayor, Robert Wagner, rather admirably refused to cross a picket line. The Bronx borough president substituted for him — and threw the opening ball right into the stomach of a newspaper photographer. WINS now desperately needed something to go right for them, and they realised Freed’s immense drawing power. They signed him for the unprecedented sum of seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and Freed moved from the mid-market town of Cleveland to a huge, powerful, transmitter in New York. He instantly became the most popular DJ in New York, and probably the best-known DJ in the world. And with his great power came record labels wanting to do Freed favours. He was already friends with the Chess brothers, and with the sure knowledge that any record the Moonglows put out would get airplay from Freed, they eagerly signed the Moonglows and put out “Sincerely”: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, “Sincerely”] “Sincerely” featured Bobby Lester on lead vocals, but the song was written by Harvey Fuqua. Or, as the label credited it, Harvey Fuqua and Alan Freed. But while those were the two credited writers, the song owes more than a little to another one. Here’s the bridge for “Sincerely”: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, “Sincerely”] And here’s the bridge for “That’s What You’re Doing to Me” by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, written by Billy Ward and sung by Clyde McPhatter: [Excerpt: The Dominoes, “That’s What You’re Doing to Me”] So while I’m critical of Freed for taking credit where it’s not deserved, it should be remembered that Fuqua wasn’t completely clean when it came to this song either. “Sincerely” rose to number one on the R&B charts, thanks in large part to Freed’s promotion. It knocked “Earth Angel” off the top, and was in turn knocked off by “Pledging My Love”, and it did relatively well in the pop charts, although once again it was kept off the top of the pop charts by an insipid white cover version, this time by the McGuire Sisters: [Excerpt: The McGuire Sisters, “Sincerely”] Chess wanted to make as much out of the Moonglows as they could, and so they decided to release records by the group under multiple names and on multiple labels. So while the Moonglows were slowly rising up the charts on Chess, The Moonlighters put out another single, “My Loving Baby”, on Checker: [Excerpt: the Moonlighters, “My Loving Baby”] There were two Moonlighters singles in total, though neither did well enough for them to continue under that name, and on top of that they also provided backing vocals on records by other Chess artists. Most notably, they sang the backing vocals on “Diddley Daddy” by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt Bo Diddley, “Diddley Daddy”] The Moonglows or Moonlighters weren’t the only ones performing under new names though. The real Moondog had, once Freed came to New York, realised that Freed had taken his name, and sued him. Freed had to pay Moondog five thousand seven hundred dollars, and stop calling himself Moondog. He had to switch to using his real name. And along with this, he changed the name of his show to “The Rock and Roll Party”. The term “rock and roll” had been used in various contexts before, of course — the theme for this series in fact comes from almost twenty years before this, but it had not been applied to a form of music on a regular basis. Freed didn’t want to get into the same trouble with the phrase “rock and roll” as he had with the name “Moondog”, and so he formed a company, Seig Music, which was owned by himself, the promoter Lew Platt, WINS radio, and the gangs–. I’m sorry, the legitimate businessman and music publisher Morris Levy. We’ll be hearing more about Levy later. This company trademarked the phrase “rock and roll” (the book I got this information from says they copyrighted the phrase, but I think that’s a confusion between copyright and trademark law on the writer’s part) and started using it for Freed’s now-branded “Rock and Roll Shows”, both on radio and on stage. The only problem was that the phrase caught on too much, thanks to Freed’s incessant use of the phrase on his show — there was no possible way they were going to be able to collect royalties from everyone who was using it, and so that particular money-making scheme faltered. The Moonglows, on the other hand, had a run of minor hits. None were as big as “Sincerely”, but they had five R&B top ten hits and a bunch more in the top twenty. The most notable, and the one people remember, is “Ten Commandments of Love”, from 1958: [excerpt: “Ten Commandments of Love”, Harvey and the Moonglows] But that song wasn’t released as by “the Moonglows”, but by “Harvey and the Moonglows”. There was increasing tension between the different members of the band, and songs started to be released as by Harvey and the Moonglows or by Bobby Lester and the Moonglows, as Chess faced the fact that the group’s two lead singers would go their separate ways. Chess had been contacted by some Detroit-based songwriters, who were setting up a new label, Anna, and wanted Chess to take over the distribution for it. By this point, Harvey Fuqua had divorced his first wife, and was working for Chess in the backroom as well as as an artist, and he was asked by Leonard Chess to go over and work with this new label. He did — and he married one of the people involved, Gwen Gordy. Gwen and her brother ended up setting up a lot of different labels, and Harvey got to run a few of them himself — there was Try-Phi, and Harvey Records. There was a whole family of different record labels owned by the same family, and they soon became quite successful. But at the same time, he was still performing and recording for Chess. We heard one of his singles, a duet with Etta James, in the episode on The Wallflower, but it’s so good we might as well play a bit of it again here: [Excerpt: Harvey Fuqua and Etta James, “Spoonful”] But at the same time both Bobby Lester and Harvey Fuqua were performing with rival groups of Moonglows, who both continued recording for Chess. Harvey’s Moonglows was an entire other vocal group, a group from Washington DC called the Marquees, who’d had one single out, “Wyatt Earp”. That single had been co-written by Bo Diddley, a Chess artist who had tried to get the group signed to Chess. When they’d been turned down, Diddley took them to Okeh instead: [Excerpt: the Marquees, “Wyatt Earp”] Fuqua hired the Marquees and renamed them, and they recorded several tracks as Harvey and the Moonglows, and while none of them were very successful commercially, some of them were musically interesting. This one in particular featured a lead from a great young vocalist who would in 1963 become Harvey Fuqua’s brother-in-law, when he married Gwen’s sister Anna: [Excerpt: Harvey and the Moonglows, “Mama Loocie”] That record didn’t do much, but that singer was to go on to bigger and better things, as was Harvey Fuqua, when one of the Gordy family’s labels became a little bit better known than the rest, with Fuqua working for it as a record producer and head of artist development. But the story of Motown Records, and of that singer, Marvin Gaye, is for another time. Next week, we’re going to continue the Chess story, with a look at another song that Alan Freed got a co-writing credit for. Come back in a week’s time to hear the story of how Chuck Berry came up with Maybellene. [Excerpt: Alan Freed’s final signoff]
Welcome to episode twenty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at The Moonglows and "Sincerely". Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. For the background on Charlie Fuqua, see episode six, on the Ink Spots. There are no books on the Moonglows, but as always with vocal groups of the fifties, Marv Goldberg has an exhaustively-researched page from which I got most of the information about them. The information on Alan Freed comes from Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson. And this compilation contains every recording by every lineup of Moonglows and Moonlighters, apart from the brief 1970s reunion. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [13 seconds of Intro from a recording of Alan Freed: “Hello, everybody, how you all? This is Alan Freed, the old King of the Moondoggers, and a hearty welcome to all our thousands of friends in Northern Ohio, Ontario Canada, Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Long about eleven thirty, fifteen minutes from now, we'll be joining the Moondog Network...”] Chess Records is one of those labels, like Sun or Stax or PWL, which defined a whole genre. And in the case of Chess, the genre it defined was the electric Chicago blues. People like Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon all cut some of their most important recordings for the Chess label. I remember when I was just starting to buy records as a child, decades after the events we're talking about, I knew before I left primary school that Chess, like Sun, was one of the two record labels that consistently put out music that I liked. And yet when it started out, Chess Records was just one of dozens of tiny little indie blues labels, like Modern, or RPM, or King Records, or Duke or Peacock, many of which were even putting out records by the same people who were recording for Chess. So this episode is actually part one of a trilogy, and over the next three episodes, we're going to talk about how Chess ended up being the one label that defined that music in the eyes of many listeners, and how that music fed into early rock and roll. And today we're also going to talk about how it ended up being influential in the formation of another of those important record labels. And to talk about that, we're going to talk about Harvey Fuqua [Foo-kwah]. Yes, Fuqua. Even though we talked about his uncle, Charlie Fuqua [Foo-kway], back in the episode on the Ink Spots, apparently Harvey pronounced his name differently from his uncle. As you might imagine, having an uncle in the most important black vocal group in history gave young Harvey Fuqua quite an impetus, even though the two of them weren't close. Fuqua started a duo with his friend Bobby Lester after they both got out of the military. Fuqua would play piano, and they would both sing. The two of them had a small amount of success, touring the South, but then shortly after their first tour Fuqua had about the worst thing possible happen to him -- there was a fire, and both his children died in it. Understandably, he didn't want to stay in Louisville Kentucky, where he'd been raising his family, so he and his wife moved to Cleveland. When he got to Cleveland, he met up again with an old friend from his military days, Danny Coggins. The two of them started performing together with a bass singer, Prentiss Barnes, under the name The Crazy Sounds. The style they were performing in was called "vocalese", and it's a really odd style of jazz singing that's... the easiest way to explain it is the opposite of scat singing. In scat, you improvise a new melody with nonsense lyrics [demonstrates] -- that's the standard form of jazz singing, other than just singing the song straight. It's what Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald or whoever would do. In vocalese, on the other hand, you do the opposite. You come up with proper lyrics, not just nonsense syllables, and you put them to a pre-recorded melody. The twist is that the pre-recorded melody you choose is a melody that's already been improvised by an instrumentalist. So for example, you could take Coleman Hawkins' great sax solo on "Body and Soul": [Excerpt: Coleman Hawkins, "Body and Soul"] Hawkins improvised that melody line, and it was a one-off performance -- every other time he played the song he'd play it differently. But Eddie Jefferson, who is credited as the inventor of vocalese, learned Hawkins' solo, added words, and sang this: [Excerpt: Eddie Jefferson, "Body and Soul"] The Crazy Sounds performed this kind of music as a vocal trio for a while, but their sound was missing something, and eventually Fuqua travelled down to Kentucky and persuaded Bobby Lester to move to Cleveland and join the Crazy Sounds. They became a four-piece, and slowly started writing their own new material in a more R&B style. They performed together a little, and eventually auditioned at a club called the Loop, where they were heard by a blues singer called Al "Fats" Thomas. Thomas apparently recorded for several labels, but this is the only one of his records I can find a copy of anywhere, on the Chess subsidiary Checker, from right around the time we're talking about in 1952: [Excerpt: Al "Fats" Thomas, "Baby Please No No"] Fats Thomas was very impressed by the Crazy Sounds, and immediately phoned his friend, the DJ Alan Freed. Alan Freed is a difficult character to explain, and his position in rock and roll history is a murky one. He was the first superstar DJ, and he was the person who more than anyone else made the phrase "rock and roll" into a term for a style of music, rather than, as it had been, just a phrase that was used in some of that music. Freed had not started out as a rhythm and blues or rock and roll DJ, and in fact had no great love for the music when he started playing it on his show. He was a lover of classical music -- particularly Wagner, whose music he loved so much that he named one of his daughters Sieglinde. But he named his first daughter Alana, which shows his other great love, which was for himself. Freed had been a DJ for several years when he was first introduced to rhythm and blues music, and he'd played a mixture of big band music and light classical, depending on what the audience wanted. But then, in 1951, something changed. Freed met Leo Mintz, the owner of a record shop named Record Rendezvous, in a bar. Mintz discovered that Freed was a DJ and took him to the shop. Freed later mythologised this moment, as he did a lot of his life, by talking about how he was shocked to see white teenagers dancing to music made by black people, and he had a sort of Damascene conversion and immediately decided to devote his show to rhythm and blues. The reality is far more prosaic. Mintz, whose business actually mostly sold to black people at this point, decided that if there was a rhythm and blues radio show then it would boost business to his shop, especially if Mintz paid for the radio show and so bought all the advertising on it. He took Freed to the shop to show him that there was indeed an audience for that kind of music, and Freed was impressed, but said that he didn't know anything about rhythm and blues music. Mintz said that that didn't matter. Mintz would pick the records -- they'd be the ones that he wanted his customers to buy -- and tell Freed what to play. All Freed had to do was to play the ones he was told and everything would work out fine. The music Mintz had played for Freed was, according to Freed later, people like LaVern Baker -- who had not yet become at all well known outside Detroit and Chicago at the time -- but Mintz set about putting together selections of records that Freed should play. Those records were mostly things with gospel-sounding vocals, a dance beat, or honking saxophones, and Freed found that his audiences responded astonishingly well to it. Freed would often interject during records, and would bang his fists on the table or other objects in time to the beat, including a cowbell that he had on his desk -- apparently some of his listeners would be annoyed when they bought the records he played to find out half the sounds they'd heard weren't on the record at all. Freed took the stage name "Moondog", after a blind New York street musician and outsider artist of that name. Freed's theme song for his radio show was "Moondog Symphony", by Moondog, a one-man-band performance credited to "Moondog (by himself) playing drums, maracas, claves, gourds, hollow legs, Chinese block and cymbals." [Excerpt: "Moondog Symphony" by Moondog] When Fats Thomas got the Crazy Sounds an audition with Freed, Freed was impressed enough that he offered them a management contract. Being managed by the biggest DJ in the city was obviously a good idea, so they took him up on that, and took his advice about how to make themselves more commercial, including changing their name to emphasise the connection to Freed. They became first the Moonpuppies and then the Moonglows. Freed set up his own record label, Champagne Records, and released the Moonglows' first single, "I Just Can't Tell No Lie": [Excerpt, "I Just Can't Tell No Lie", the Moonglows] According to Freed's biographer John A. Jackson, Freed provided additional percussion on that song, hitting a telephone book in time with the rhythm as he would on his show. I don't hear any percussion on there other than the drum kit, but maybe you can, if you have better ears than me. This was a song that had been written by the Moonglows themselves, but when the record came out, both sides were credited to Al Lance -- which was a pseudonym for Alan Freed. And so the DJ who was pushing their record on the radio was also their manager, and the owner of the record company, and the credited songwriter. Unsurprisingly, then, Freed promoted "I Just Can't Tell No Lie" heavily on his radio show, but it did nothing anywhere outside of Cleveland and the immediately surrounding area. Danny Coggins quit the group, fed up with their lack of success, and he was replaced by a singer who variously went under the names Alex Graves, Alex Walton, Pete Graves, and Pete Walton. Freed closed down Champagne Records. For a time it looked like the Moonglows' career was going to have peaked with their one single, as Freed signed another vocal group, the Coronets, and got them signed to Chess Records in Chicago. Chess was a blues label, which had started in 1947 as Aristocrat Records, but in 1948 it was bought out by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess, who had emigrated from Poland as children and Anglicised their names. Their father was in the liquor business during the Prohibition era, which in Chicago meant he was involved with Al Capone, and in their twenties the Chess brothers had started running nightclubs in the black area of Chicago. Chess, at its start, had the artists who had originally recorded for Aristocrat -- people like Muddy Waters and Sunnyland Slim, and they also licensed records made by Sam Phillips in Memphis, and because of that put out early recordings by Howlin' Wolf, before just poaching Wolf for their own label, and Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88". By 1954, thanks largely to their in-house bass player and songwriter Willie Dixon, Chess had become known as the home of electric Chicago blues, and were putting out classic after classic in that genre. But they were still interested in putting out other styles of black music too, and were happy to sign up doo-wop groups. The Coronets put out a single, "Nadine", on Chess, which did very well. The credited writer was Alan Freed: [Excerpt: "Nadine", the Coronets] The Coronets' follow-up single did less well, though, and Chess dropped them. But Freed had been trying for some time to make a parallel career as a concert promoter, and indeed a few months before he signed the Moonglows to a management contract he had put on what is now considered the first major rock and roll concert -- the Moondog Coronation Ball, at the Cleveland Arena. That show had been Freed's first inkling of just how popular he and the music he was playing were becoming -- twenty thousand people tried to get into the show, even though the arena only had a capacity of ten thousand, and the show had to be cancelled after the first song by the first performer, because it was becoming unsafe to continue. But Freed put on further shows at the arena, with better organisation, and in August 1953 he put on "the Big Rhythm and Blues Show". This featured Fats Domino and Big Joe Turner, and the Moonglows were also put on the bill. As a result of their appearance on the show, they got signed to Chance Records, a small label whose biggest act was the doo-wop group The Flamingos. Freed didn't own this label of course, but by this time he'd got into the record distribution business, and the distribution company he co-owned was Chance's distributor in the Cleveland area. The other co-owner was the owner of Chance Records, and Freed's brother was the distributor's vice-president and in charge of running it. The Moonglows' first single on Chance, a Christmas single, did nothing in the charts, but they followed it with a rather unusual choice. "Secret Love" was a hit for Doris Day, from the soundtrack of her film "Calamity Jane": [Excerpt: Doris Day, "Secret Love"] In the context of the film, which has a certain amount of what we would now call queerbaiting, that song can be read as a song about lesbianism or bisexuality. But that didn't stop a lot of male artists covering it for other markets. We've talked before about how popular songs would be recorded in different genres, and so Day's pop version was accompanied by Slim Whitman's country version and by this by the Moonglows: [Excerpt: the Moonglows, "Secret Love"] Unfortunately, a fortnight after the Moonglows released their version, the Orioles, who were a much more successful doo-wop group, released their own record of the song, and the two competed for the same market. However, "Secret Love" did well enough, given a promotional push by Freed, that it became apparent that the Moonglows could have a proper career. It sold over a hundred thousand copies, but then the next few records on Chance failed to sell, and Chance closed down when their biggest act, the Flamingos, moved first to Parrot Records, and then quickly on to Chess. It seemed like everything was against the Moonglows, but they were about to get a big boost, thanks in part to a strike. WINS radio in New York had been taken over at a rock-bottom price by an investment consortium who wanted to turn the money-losing station into a money-maker. It had a powerful transmitter, and if they could boost listenership they would almost certainly be able to sell it on at a massive profit. One of the first things the new owners did was to sack their house band -- they weren't going to pay musicians any more, as live music was too expensive. This caused the American Federation of Musicians to picket the station, which was expected and understandable. But WINS also had the broadcast rights to the New York Yankees games -- indeed, the ball games were the only really popular thing that the station had. And so the AFM started to picket Yankee Stadium too. On the week of the starting game for what looked to be the Yankees' sixth World Series win in a row. That game would normally have had the opening ball thrown by the Mayor of New York, but the Mayor, Robert Wagner, rather admirably refused to cross a picket line. The Bronx borough president substituted for him -- and threw the opening ball right into the stomach of a newspaper photographer. WINS now desperately needed something to go right for them, and they realised Freed's immense drawing power. They signed him for the unprecedented sum of seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and Freed moved from the mid-market town of Cleveland to a huge, powerful, transmitter in New York. He instantly became the most popular DJ in New York, and probably the best-known DJ in the world. And with his great power came record labels wanting to do Freed favours. He was already friends with the Chess brothers, and with the sure knowledge that any record the Moonglows put out would get airplay from Freed, they eagerly signed the Moonglows and put out "Sincerely": [Excerpt: The Moonglows, "Sincerely"] "Sincerely" featured Bobby Lester on lead vocals, but the song was written by Harvey Fuqua. Or, as the label credited it, Harvey Fuqua and Alan Freed. But while those were the two credited writers, the song owes more than a little to another one. Here's the bridge for "Sincerely": [Excerpt: The Moonglows, "Sincerely"] And here's the bridge for "That's What You're Doing to Me" by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, written by Billy Ward and sung by Clyde McPhatter: [Excerpt: The Dominoes, "That's What You're Doing to Me"] So while I'm critical of Freed for taking credit where it's not deserved, it should be remembered that Fuqua wasn't completely clean when it came to this song either. "Sincerely" rose to number one on the R&B charts, thanks in large part to Freed's promotion. It knocked "Earth Angel" off the top, and was in turn knocked off by "Pledging My Love", and it did relatively well in the pop charts, although once again it was kept off the top of the pop charts by an insipid white cover version, this time by the McGuire Sisters: [Excerpt: The McGuire Sisters, "Sincerely"] Chess wanted to make as much out of the Moonglows as they could, and so they decided to release records by the group under multiple names and on multiple labels. So while the Moonglows were slowly rising up the charts on Chess, The Moonlighters put out another single, "My Loving Baby", on Checker: [Excerpt: the Moonlighters, "My Loving Baby"] There were two Moonlighters singles in total, though neither did well enough for them to continue under that name, and on top of that they also provided backing vocals on records by other Chess artists. Most notably, they sang the backing vocals on "Diddley Daddy" by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt Bo Diddley, "Diddley Daddy"] The Moonglows or Moonlighters weren't the only ones performing under new names though. The real Moondog had, once Freed came to New York, realised that Freed had taken his name, and sued him. Freed had to pay Moondog five thousand seven hundred dollars, and stop calling himself Moondog. He had to switch to using his real name. And along with this, he changed the name of his show to "The Rock and Roll Party". The term "rock and roll" had been used in various contexts before, of course -- the theme for this series in fact comes from almost twenty years before this, but it had not been applied to a form of music on a regular basis. Freed didn't want to get into the same trouble with the phrase "rock and roll" as he had with the name "Moondog", and so he formed a company, Seig Music, which was owned by himself, the promoter Lew Platt, WINS radio, and the gangs–. I'm sorry, the legitimate businessman and music publisher Morris Levy. We'll be hearing more about Levy later. This company trademarked the phrase "rock and roll" (the book I got this information from says they copyrighted the phrase, but I think that's a confusion between copyright and trademark law on the writer's part) and started using it for Freed's now-branded "Rock and Roll Shows", both on radio and on stage. The only problem was that the phrase caught on too much, thanks to Freed's incessant use of the phrase on his show -- there was no possible way they were going to be able to collect royalties from everyone who was using it, and so that particular money-making scheme faltered. The Moonglows, on the other hand, had a run of minor hits. None were as big as "Sincerely", but they had five R&B top ten hits and a bunch more in the top twenty. The most notable, and the one people remember, is "Ten Commandments of Love", from 1958: [excerpt: "Ten Commandments of Love", Harvey and the Moonglows] But that song wasn't released as by "the Moonglows", but by "Harvey and the Moonglows". There was increasing tension between the different members of the band, and songs started to be released as by Harvey and the Moonglows or by Bobby Lester and the Moonglows, as Chess faced the fact that the group's two lead singers would go their separate ways. Chess had been contacted by some Detroit-based songwriters, who were setting up a new label, Anna, and wanted Chess to take over the distribution for it. By this point, Harvey Fuqua had divorced his first wife, and was working for Chess in the backroom as well as as an artist, and he was asked by Leonard Chess to go over and work with this new label. He did -- and he married one of the people involved, Gwen Gordy. Gwen and her brother ended up setting up a lot of different labels, and Harvey got to run a few of them himself -- there was Try-Phi, and Harvey Records. There was a whole family of different record labels owned by the same family, and they soon became quite successful. But at the same time, he was still performing and recording for Chess. We heard one of his singles, a duet with Etta James, in the episode on The Wallflower, but it's so good we might as well play a bit of it again here: [Excerpt: Harvey Fuqua and Etta James, "Spoonful"] But at the same time both Bobby Lester and Harvey Fuqua were performing with rival groups of Moonglows, who both continued recording for Chess. Harvey's Moonglows was an entire other vocal group, a group from Washington DC called the Marquees, who'd had one single out, "Wyatt Earp". That single had been co-written by Bo Diddley, a Chess artist who had tried to get the group signed to Chess. When they'd been turned down, Diddley took them to Okeh instead: [Excerpt: the Marquees, "Wyatt Earp"] Fuqua hired the Marquees and renamed them, and they recorded several tracks as Harvey and the Moonglows, and while none of them were very successful commercially, some of them were musically interesting. This one in particular featured a lead from a great young vocalist who would in 1963 become Harvey Fuqua's brother-in-law, when he married Gwen's sister Anna: [Excerpt: Harvey and the Moonglows, "Mama Loocie"] That record didn't do much, but that singer was to go on to bigger and better things, as was Harvey Fuqua, when one of the Gordy family's labels became a little bit better known than the rest, with Fuqua working for it as a record producer and head of artist development. But the story of Motown Records, and of that singer, Marvin Gaye, is for another time. Next week, we're going to continue the Chess story, with a look at another song that Alan Freed got a co-writing credit for. Come back in a week's time to hear the story of how Chuck Berry came up with Maybellene. [Excerpt: Alan Freed's final signoff]
Welcome to episode twenty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at The Moonglows and “Sincerely”. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. For the background on Charlie Fuqua, see episode six, on the Ink Spots. There are no books on the Moonglows, but as always with vocal groups of the fifties, Marv Goldberg has an exhaustively-researched page from which I got most of the information about them. The information on Alan Freed comes from Big Beat Heat: Alan Freed and the Early Years of Rock & Roll by John A. Jackson. And this compilation contains every recording by every lineup of Moonglows and Moonlighters, apart from the brief 1970s reunion. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [13 seconds of Intro from a recording of Alan Freed: “Hello, everybody, how you all? This is Alan Freed, the old King of the Moondoggers, and a hearty welcome to all our thousands of friends in Northern Ohio, Ontario Canada, Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, West Virginia. Long about eleven thirty, fifteen minutes from now, we’ll be joining the Moondog Network…”] Chess Records is one of those labels, like Sun or Stax or PWL, which defined a whole genre. And in the case of Chess, the genre it defined was the electric Chicago blues. People like Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and Willie Dixon all cut some of their most important recordings for the Chess label. I remember when I was just starting to buy records as a child, decades after the events we’re talking about, I knew before I left primary school that Chess, like Sun, was one of the two record labels that consistently put out music that I liked. And yet when it started out, Chess Records was just one of dozens of tiny little indie blues labels, like Modern, or RPM, or King Records, or Duke or Peacock, many of which were even putting out records by the same people who were recording for Chess. So this episode is actually part one of a trilogy, and over the next three episodes, we’re going to talk about how Chess ended up being the one label that defined that music in the eyes of many listeners, and how that music fed into early rock and roll. And today we’re also going to talk about how it ended up being influential in the formation of another of those important record labels. And to talk about that, we’re going to talk about Harvey Fuqua [Foo-kwah]. Yes, Fuqua. Even though we talked about his uncle, Charlie Fuqua [Foo-kway], back in the episode on the Ink Spots, apparently Harvey pronounced his name differently from his uncle. As you might imagine, having an uncle in the most important black vocal group in history gave young Harvey Fuqua quite an impetus, even though the two of them weren’t close. Fuqua started a duo with his friend Bobby Lester after they both got out of the military. Fuqua would play piano, and they would both sing. The two of them had a small amount of success, touring the South, but then shortly after their first tour Fuqua had about the worst thing possible happen to him — there was a fire, and both his children died in it. Understandably, he didn’t want to stay in Louisville Kentucky, where he’d been raising his family, so he and his wife moved to Cleveland. When he got to Cleveland, he met up again with an old friend from his military days, Danny Coggins. The two of them started performing together with a bass singer, Prentiss Barnes, under the name The Crazy Sounds. The style they were performing in was called “vocalese”, and it’s a really odd style of jazz singing that’s… the easiest way to explain it is the opposite of scat singing. In scat, you improvise a new melody with nonsense lyrics [demonstrates] — that’s the standard form of jazz singing, other than just singing the song straight. It’s what Louis Armstrong or Ella Fitzgerald or whoever would do. In vocalese, on the other hand, you do the opposite. You come up with proper lyrics, not just nonsense syllables, and you put them to a pre-recorded melody. The twist is that the pre-recorded melody you choose is a melody that’s already been improvised by an instrumentalist. So for example, you could take Coleman Hawkins’ great sax solo on “Body and Soul”: [Excerpt: Coleman Hawkins, “Body and Soul”] Hawkins improvised that melody line, and it was a one-off performance — every other time he played the song he’d play it differently. But Eddie Jefferson, who is credited as the inventor of vocalese, learned Hawkins’ solo, added words, and sang this: [Excerpt: Eddie Jefferson, “Body and Soul”] The Crazy Sounds performed this kind of music as a vocal trio for a while, but their sound was missing something, and eventually Fuqua travelled down to Kentucky and persuaded Bobby Lester to move to Cleveland and join the Crazy Sounds. They became a four-piece, and slowly started writing their own new material in a more R&B style. They performed together a little, and eventually auditioned at a club called the Loop, where they were heard by a blues singer called Al “Fats” Thomas. Thomas apparently recorded for several labels, but this is the only one of his records I can find a copy of anywhere, on the Chess subsidiary Checker, from right around the time we’re talking about in 1952: [Excerpt: Al “Fats” Thomas, “Baby Please No No”] Fats Thomas was very impressed by the Crazy Sounds, and immediately phoned his friend, the DJ Alan Freed. Alan Freed is a difficult character to explain, and his position in rock and roll history is a murky one. He was the first superstar DJ, and he was the person who more than anyone else made the phrase “rock and roll” into a term for a style of music, rather than, as it had been, just a phrase that was used in some of that music. Freed had not started out as a rhythm and blues or rock and roll DJ, and in fact had no great love for the music when he started playing it on his show. He was a lover of classical music — particularly Wagner, whose music he loved so much that he named one of his daughters Sieglinde. But he named his first daughter Alana, which shows his other great love, which was for himself. Freed had been a DJ for several years when he was first introduced to rhythm and blues music, and he’d played a mixture of big band music and light classical, depending on what the audience wanted. But then, in 1951, something changed. Freed met Leo Mintz, the owner of a record shop named Record Rendezvous, in a bar. Mintz discovered that Freed was a DJ and took him to the shop. Freed later mythologised this moment, as he did a lot of his life, by talking about how he was shocked to see white teenagers dancing to music made by black people, and he had a sort of Damascene conversion and immediately decided to devote his show to rhythm and blues. The reality is far more prosaic. Mintz, whose business actually mostly sold to black people at this point, decided that if there was a rhythm and blues radio show then it would boost business to his shop, especially if Mintz paid for the radio show and so bought all the advertising on it. He took Freed to the shop to show him that there was indeed an audience for that kind of music, and Freed was impressed, but said that he didn’t know anything about rhythm and blues music. Mintz said that that didn’t matter. Mintz would pick the records — they’d be the ones that he wanted his customers to buy — and tell Freed what to play. All Freed had to do was to play the ones he was told and everything would work out fine. The music Mintz had played for Freed was, according to Freed later, people like LaVern Baker — who had not yet become at all well known outside Detroit and Chicago at the time — but Mintz set about putting together selections of records that Freed should play. Those records were mostly things with gospel-sounding vocals, a dance beat, or honking saxophones, and Freed found that his audiences responded astonishingly well to it. Freed would often interject during records, and would bang his fists on the table or other objects in time to the beat, including a cowbell that he had on his desk — apparently some of his listeners would be annoyed when they bought the records he played to find out half the sounds they’d heard weren’t on the record at all. Freed took the stage name “Moondog”, after a blind New York street musician and outsider artist of that name. Freed’s theme song for his radio show was “Moondog Symphony”, by Moondog, a one-man-band performance credited to “Moondog (by himself) playing drums, maracas, claves, gourds, hollow legs, Chinese block and cymbals.” [Excerpt: “Moondog Symphony” by Moondog] When Fats Thomas got the Crazy Sounds an audition with Freed, Freed was impressed enough that he offered them a management contract. Being managed by the biggest DJ in the city was obviously a good idea, so they took him up on that, and took his advice about how to make themselves more commercial, including changing their name to emphasise the connection to Freed. They became first the Moonpuppies and then the Moonglows. Freed set up his own record label, Champagne Records, and released the Moonglows’ first single, “I Just Can’t Tell No Lie”: [Excerpt, “I Just Can’t Tell No Lie”, the Moonglows] According to Freed’s biographer John A. Jackson, Freed provided additional percussion on that song, hitting a telephone book in time with the rhythm as he would on his show. I don’t hear any percussion on there other than the drum kit, but maybe you can, if you have better ears than me. This was a song that had been written by the Moonglows themselves, but when the record came out, both sides were credited to Al Lance — which was a pseudonym for Alan Freed. And so the DJ who was pushing their record on the radio was also their manager, and the owner of the record company, and the credited songwriter. Unsurprisingly, then, Freed promoted “I Just Can’t Tell No Lie” heavily on his radio show, but it did nothing anywhere outside of Cleveland and the immediately surrounding area. Danny Coggins quit the group, fed up with their lack of success, and he was replaced by a singer who variously went under the names Alex Graves, Alex Walton, Pete Graves, and Pete Walton. Freed closed down Champagne Records. For a time it looked like the Moonglows’ career was going to have peaked with their one single, as Freed signed another vocal group, the Coronets, and got them signed to Chess Records in Chicago. Chess was a blues label, which had started in 1947 as Aristocrat Records, but in 1948 it was bought out by two brothers, Leonard and Phil Chess, who had emigrated from Poland as children and Anglicised their names. Their father was in the liquor business during the Prohibition era, which in Chicago meant he was involved with Al Capone, and in their twenties the Chess brothers had started running nightclubs in the black area of Chicago. Chess, at its start, had the artists who had originally recorded for Aristocrat — people like Muddy Waters and Sunnyland Slim, and they also licensed records made by Sam Phillips in Memphis, and because of that put out early recordings by Howlin’ Wolf, before just poaching Wolf for their own label, and Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88”. By 1954, thanks largely to their in-house bass player and songwriter Willie Dixon, Chess had become known as the home of electric Chicago blues, and were putting out classic after classic in that genre. But they were still interested in putting out other styles of black music too, and were happy to sign up doo-wop groups. The Coronets put out a single, “Nadine”, on Chess, which did very well. The credited writer was Alan Freed: [Excerpt: “Nadine”, the Coronets] The Coronets’ follow-up single did less well, though, and Chess dropped them. But Freed had been trying for some time to make a parallel career as a concert promoter, and indeed a few months before he signed the Moonglows to a management contract he had put on what is now considered the first major rock and roll concert — the Moondog Coronation Ball, at the Cleveland Arena. That show had been Freed’s first inkling of just how popular he and the music he was playing were becoming — twenty thousand people tried to get into the show, even though the arena only had a capacity of ten thousand, and the show had to be cancelled after the first song by the first performer, because it was becoming unsafe to continue. But Freed put on further shows at the arena, with better organisation, and in August 1953 he put on “the Big Rhythm and Blues Show”. This featured Fats Domino and Big Joe Turner, and the Moonglows were also put on the bill. As a result of their appearance on the show, they got signed to Chance Records, a small label whose biggest act was the doo-wop group The Flamingos. Freed didn’t own this label of course, but by this time he’d got into the record distribution business, and the distribution company he co-owned was Chance’s distributor in the Cleveland area. The other co-owner was the owner of Chance Records, and Freed’s brother was the distributor’s vice-president and in charge of running it. The Moonglows’ first single on Chance, a Christmas single, did nothing in the charts, but they followed it with a rather unusual choice. “Secret Love” was a hit for Doris Day, from the soundtrack of her film “Calamity Jane”: [Excerpt: Doris Day, “Secret Love”] In the context of the film, which has a certain amount of what we would now call queerbaiting, that song can be read as a song about lesbianism or bisexuality. But that didn’t stop a lot of male artists covering it for other markets. We’ve talked before about how popular songs would be recorded in different genres, and so Day’s pop version was accompanied by Slim Whitman’s country version and by this by the Moonglows: [Excerpt: the Moonglows, “Secret Love”] Unfortunately, a fortnight after the Moonglows released their version, the Orioles, who were a much more successful doo-wop group, released their own record of the song, and the two competed for the same market. However, “Secret Love” did well enough, given a promotional push by Freed, that it became apparent that the Moonglows could have a proper career. It sold over a hundred thousand copies, but then the next few records on Chance failed to sell, and Chance closed down when their biggest act, the Flamingos, moved first to Parrot Records, and then quickly on to Chess. It seemed like everything was against the Moonglows, but they were about to get a big boost, thanks in part to a strike. WINS radio in New York had been taken over at a rock-bottom price by an investment consortium who wanted to turn the money-losing station into a money-maker. It had a powerful transmitter, and if they could boost listenership they would almost certainly be able to sell it on at a massive profit. One of the first things the new owners did was to sack their house band — they weren’t going to pay musicians any more, as live music was too expensive. This caused the American Federation of Musicians to picket the station, which was expected and understandable. But WINS also had the broadcast rights to the New York Yankees games — indeed, the ball games were the only really popular thing that the station had. And so the AFM started to picket Yankee Stadium too. On the week of the starting game for what looked to be the Yankees’ sixth World Series win in a row. That game would normally have had the opening ball thrown by the Mayor of New York, but the Mayor, Robert Wagner, rather admirably refused to cross a picket line. The Bronx borough president substituted for him — and threw the opening ball right into the stomach of a newspaper photographer. WINS now desperately needed something to go right for them, and they realised Freed’s immense drawing power. They signed him for the unprecedented sum of seventy-five thousand dollars a year, and Freed moved from the mid-market town of Cleveland to a huge, powerful, transmitter in New York. He instantly became the most popular DJ in New York, and probably the best-known DJ in the world. And with his great power came record labels wanting to do Freed favours. He was already friends with the Chess brothers, and with the sure knowledge that any record the Moonglows put out would get airplay from Freed, they eagerly signed the Moonglows and put out “Sincerely”: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, “Sincerely”] “Sincerely” featured Bobby Lester on lead vocals, but the song was written by Harvey Fuqua. Or, as the label credited it, Harvey Fuqua and Alan Freed. But while those were the two credited writers, the song owes more than a little to another one. Here’s the bridge for “Sincerely”: [Excerpt: The Moonglows, “Sincerely”] And here’s the bridge for “That’s What You’re Doing to Me” by Billy Ward and the Dominoes, written by Billy Ward and sung by Clyde McPhatter: [Excerpt: The Dominoes, “That’s What You’re Doing to Me”] So while I’m critical of Freed for taking credit where it’s not deserved, it should be remembered that Fuqua wasn’t completely clean when it came to this song either. “Sincerely” rose to number one on the R&B charts, thanks in large part to Freed’s promotion. It knocked “Earth Angel” off the top, and was in turn knocked off by “Pledging My Love”, and it did relatively well in the pop charts, although once again it was kept off the top of the pop charts by an insipid white cover version, this time by the McGuire Sisters: [Excerpt: The McGuire Sisters, “Sincerely”] Chess wanted to make as much out of the Moonglows as they could, and so they decided to release records by the group under multiple names and on multiple labels. So while the Moonglows were slowly rising up the charts on Chess, The Moonlighters put out another single, “My Loving Baby”, on Checker: [Excerpt: the Moonlighters, “My Loving Baby”] There were two Moonlighters singles in total, though neither did well enough for them to continue under that name, and on top of that they also provided backing vocals on records by other Chess artists. Most notably, they sang the backing vocals on “Diddley Daddy” by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt Bo Diddley, “Diddley Daddy”] The Moonglows or Moonlighters weren’t the only ones performing under new names though. The real Moondog had, once Freed came to New York, realised that Freed had taken his name, and sued him. Freed had to pay Moondog five thousand seven hundred dollars, and stop calling himself Moondog. He had to switch to using his real name. And along with this, he changed the name of his show to “The Rock and Roll Party”. The term “rock and roll” had been used in various contexts before, of course — the theme for this series in fact comes from almost twenty years before this, but it had not been applied to a form of music on a regular basis. Freed didn’t want to get into the same trouble with the phrase “rock and roll” as he had with the name “Moondog”, and so he formed a company, Seig Music, which was owned by himself, the promoter Lew Platt, WINS radio, and the gangs–. I’m sorry, the legitimate businessman and music publisher Morris Levy. We’ll be hearing more about Levy later. This company trademarked the phrase “rock and roll” (the book I got this information from says they copyrighted the phrase, but I think that’s a confusion between copyright and trademark law on the writer’s part) and started using it for Freed’s now-branded “Rock and Roll Shows”, both on radio and on stage. The only problem was that the phrase caught on too much, thanks to Freed’s incessant use of the phrase on his show — there was no possible way they were going to be able to collect royalties from everyone who was using it, and so that particular money-making scheme faltered. The Moonglows, on the other hand, had a run of minor hits. None were as big as “Sincerely”, but they had five R&B top ten hits and a bunch more in the top twenty. The most notable, and the one people remember, is “Ten Commandments of Love”, from 1958: [excerpt: “Ten Commandments of Love”, Harvey and the Moonglows] But that song wasn’t released as by “the Moonglows”, but by “Harvey and the Moonglows”. There was increasing tension between the different members of the band, and songs started to be released as by Harvey and the Moonglows or by Bobby Lester and the Moonglows, as Chess faced the fact that the group’s two lead singers would go their separate ways. Chess had been contacted by some Detroit-based songwriters, who were setting up a new label, Anna, and wanted Chess to take over the distribution for it. By this point, Harvey Fuqua had divorced his first wife, and was working for Chess in the backroom as well as as an artist, and he was asked by Leonard Chess to go over and work with this new label. He did — and he married one of the people involved, Gwen Gordy. Gwen and her brother ended up setting up a lot of different labels, and Harvey got to run a few of them himself — there was Try-Phi, and Harvey Records. There was a whole family of different record labels owned by the same family, and they soon became quite successful. But at the same time, he was still performing and recording for Chess. We heard one of his singles, a duet with Etta James, in the episode on The Wallflower, but it’s so good we might as well play a bit of it again here: [Excerpt: Harvey Fuqua and Etta James, “Spoonful”] But at the same time both Bobby Lester and Harvey Fuqua were performing with rival groups of Moonglows, who both continued recording for Chess. Harvey’s Moonglows was an entire other vocal group, a group from Washington DC called the Marquees, who’d had one single out, “Wyatt Earp”. That single had been co-written by Bo Diddley, a Chess artist who had tried to get the group signed to Chess. When they’d been turned down, Diddley took them to Okeh instead: [Excerpt: the Marquees, “Wyatt Earp”] Fuqua hired the Marquees and renamed them, and they recorded several tracks as Harvey and the Moonglows, and while none of them were very successful commercially, some of them were musically interesting. This one in particular featured a lead from a great young vocalist who would in 1963 become Harvey Fuqua’s brother-in-law, when he married Gwen’s sister Anna: [Excerpt: Harvey and the Moonglows, “Mama Loocie”] That record didn’t do much, but that singer was to go on to bigger and better things, as was Harvey Fuqua, when one of the Gordy family’s labels became a little bit better known than the rest, with Fuqua working for it as a record producer and head of artist development. But the story of Motown Records, and of that singer, Marvin Gaye, is for another time. Next week, we’re going to continue the Chess story, with a look at another song that Alan Freed got a co-writing credit for. Come back in a week’s time to hear the story of how Chuck Berry came up with Maybellene. [Excerpt: Alan Freed’s final signoff]
Hurdy Gurdy Songs about the electoral process. So VOTE on November 6th! Playlist: 1. Sunnyland Slim “Be Careful How You Vote” from Be Careful How You Vote on Earwig Music 2. Robb Johnson “I'm Voting Labour Next Thursday (feat. Fae Simon & The Corbynistas)” from I'm Voting Labour Next Thursday (feat. Fae Simon & The Corbynistas) - Single on Irregular Records 3. Willie Nelson “Vote 'Em Out” from Vote 'Em Out 4. Dolly Parton “19th Amendment” from 19th Amendment 5. Blaze Folley “Election day” from Election day 6. Hays & Wood, Tom Glazer, Pete Seeger “Voting Union” from Voting Union 7. Smart Songs “Voting Rights” from Trip to DC on Smart Songs, LLC 8. The Lost Patrol Band “If Voting Would Change Anything” from The Lost Patrol Band on Burning Heart Records/Epitaph 9. Molotov “Voto Latino” from Voto Latino 10. Rogue Wave “Vote for Me Dummy (30 Days, 30 Songs)” from Vote for Me Dummy (30 Days, 30 Songs) - Single on 30 Days, 30 Songs 11. Black Flag “Rise Above” from Damaged (1981) on SST Records 12. Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul “Vote that mutha' out” from Soulfire Live! on UME Direct 13. Alice Cooper “Elected” from Alice Cooper's Greatest Hits (MP3, 1972) 14. The Motern Media Holiday Singers “Congratulations on Voting! You Voted! Yes!” from Congratulations Songs on Motern Media
Harmonica Ace, Pierre Lacocque is the founder and leader of Mississippi Heat which has been a hallmark band in the Chicago area for decades and a franchise brand for the Delmark Record label. Pierre is from Belgium and began performing on the Chicago scene with greats like Sunnyland Slim and Jimmy Rogers during the 90’s. His group released their sixth studio effort with Delmark, Cab Driving Man, which has received rave fanfare and topped the blues charts for consecutive months. Their lead singer, Inneta Visor, a star in her own right, has cemented the bands vocal foundation for over a decade and has been nominated for a Koko Taylor Award.
Tim Williams (Anywhere C/O The Blues); Nick Holt (If It's Too Late); Shawn Holt and The Teardrops (Before You Accuse Me); James Wiggins (Frisco Bound); Blind Leroy Garnett (Louisiana Glide); Lowell Fulson (Think Twice Before You Speak); Katie Webster (Too Much Sugar For A Dime); Dan Treanor's Afrosippi Band (Knocked Out); Jimmie Gordon (Lookin' For The Blues); Bill Gaither (Stony Lonesome Graveyard); Jimmy 'Duck' Holmes (I'd Rather Be The Devil); Watermelon Slim and Super Chikan (Thou Art With Me); Rod Cook and Toast (Blues Got A Hold On Me); R.L. Burnside (Too Many Ups); Ben Prestage (See What My Buddy Done); Sunnyland Slim, Honeyboy Edwards, Kansas City Red, Big Walter Horton and Floyd Jones (I'm Going Back Home).
Todd Wolfe Band (Sunnyvale); JP Blues (Trouble On Heels); John-Alex Mason (Free); Gino Matteo (Here Comes The Lord); Lewis Hamilton (Ghost Train); The Cathouse Radio (Next Big Thing); Josh White (Southern Exposure); Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (Working Man's Blues); Blind Mississippi Morris (When A Woman Gets In Trouble); Tampa Red (Turpentine Blues); Lonnie Johnson (Get Yourself Together); Jeff Jensen (Crosseye Cat); Lightnin' Slim (Ethel Mae); Sunnyland Slim and Lacy Gibson (Bessie Mae); Albert Collins (Ego Trip).
LURRIE BELL is a legend of the Chicago blues scene. Born in 1958, the son of famed blues harmonica player Carey Bell, Lurrie picked up his father's guitar at age of five and taught himself to play.In addition, he grew up with many of the Chicago blues legends around him. Eddie Taylor, Big Walter Horton, Eddie C. Campbell, Eddie Clearwater, Lovie Lee, Sunnyland Slim, Jimmy Dawkins and many more were frequent visitors to his house. They all helped to shape and school him in the blues, but none as much as his father's long-time employer Muddy Waters. By seventeen Lurrie Bell was playing on stage with Willie Dixon and soon formed The Sons of Blues band and toured with Koko Taylor. 'The Devil Ain't Got No Music,' is Lurrie's latest. It's a collection of acoustic blues and gospel songs that recollect the music he often played with his dad and at church in Mississippi and Alabama as a child. LISA BIALES is a soulful songstress, performer, and recording artist who weaves a tapestry of Americana, jazz and blues inspired folk. A native of Ohio, Lisa grew up in a musical family and began her career as a performing songwriter at the age of thirteen. Lisa has independently released six albums of music under her own Big Song Music label including her latest 'Just Like Honey' which was produced by WoodSongs alum EG Kight. Lisa also makes her film debut this year in Academy Award-winning director Francis Ford Coppola's new film,Twixt.
Omar & The Howlers (All About The Money); Ben Prestage (The Ballad Of Ray And Ruby); Soulstack (Let Me Be Your Fool); Tom Principato & Danny Gatton (Talk To Me); Sonny Boy Holmes (Walkin' And Cryin' Blues); Papa Lightfoot (Mean Old Train); Johnny Neel (Right Out The Window); Cee Cee James (Blood Red Blues); Junior Wells (You Don't Love Me, Baby); Trevor Sewell (Hate Me For A Reason); L.B. Lawson & James Scott (Got My Call Card); Lightnin' Slim (I Can't Be Successful); Liz Mandeville (My Baby's Her Baby Too); Eric Bibb (Could Be You, Could Be Me); Sunnyland Slim feat. Big Time Sarah (Long Tall Daddy); Armadillo Blues (Jackson City Blues).
Southern Guitar MastersMississippi Fred McDowell Charley Patton Robert JohnsonSkip James Bukka White Rose Hemphill Sunnyland SlimFrom southern England:CreamThe blues is about many things. About how your woman done you wrong. The Boss Man being mean to you. Things humorous. Things sad. Death. Dying and all manner of worldly matters concern the blues.The blues was created long before the turn of the 19th century. The blues was built on slavery and the fact that a man was taken from his family and homeland against his will. Slavery happened for centuries. However; it wasn't until those slaves were brought to the shores of the United States that the blues, as we know the art form today, was born.The blues reside in almost every country in the world. Even countries that don't call English it's first language.Everyone in the world can relate to the blues. And today, with all the problems in the world, more and more people have an absolute right to sing the blues.Today's show presents the blues from the early part of the 20th century. These are but a handful of the original blues men who traveled the dusty roads of the south; did time in many of the prisons and rode the rods, as the trains were called back then, into the annals of musical history. Just imagine that time.This is one show I really enjoyed putting together. I hope you enjoy listening to Southern Guitar Masters.John Rhys/BluePower.comHere's the music:1)...."I'm Goin' Home"....Ervin Webb & Prisoners....Alan Lomax Collection2)...."61 Highway Blues"....Fred McDowell....Alan Lomax Collection 3)...."Fred McDowell's Blues"....Fred McDowell....Alan Lomax Collection 4)...."Stone Pony Blues....Charley Patton....VMK 5)...."Crossroads"....Robert Johnson....Columbia 6)...."Fixin' To Die Blues"....Bukka White....Columbia Legacy Series 7)...."Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues"....Skip James....VMK 8)...."Rolled And Tumbled"....Rose Hemphill....Alan Lomax Collection 9)...."Roll And Tumble Blues"....Sunnyland Slim, Johnny Shines and Big Joe Williams....Blue Sun 10)..."Rollin' And Tumblin' "....Cream....ReactionSome dialog taken from the All Music Guide to the Blues.Click here to listen to....Southern Guitar Masters!
Barbeque Bob is a seasoned veteran harmonica virtuoso and vocalist from the Boston, MA with nearly 30 years of experience in the business and has worked and toured wth many different blues legends, including Jimmy Rogers, Louisiana Red, Sunnyland Slim, and Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson. After nearly three years of being forced to take things very slow due to being on kidney dialysis, Bob recieved a kidney transplant on May 1, 2003, and he is now back on the scene with a vengeance. Former Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton harp legend Jerry Portnoys says,"Barbeque Bob is not just one of the best around the Boston area, but one of the very best anywhere, period!" The late, great West Coast blues harmonica giant and Alligator recording artist William Clarke called his playing "powerful and well focused." http://www.barbequebob.com
Barbeque Bob is a seasoned veteran harmonica virtuoso and vocalist from the Boston, MA with nearly 30 years of experience in the business and has worked and toured wth many different blues legends, including Jimmy Rogers, Louisiana Red, Sunnyland Slim, and Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson. After nearly three years of being forced to take things very slow due to being on kidney dialysis, Bob recieved a kidney transplant on May 1, 2003, and he is now back on the scene with a vengeance. Former Muddy Waters and Eric Clapton harp legend Jerry Portnoys says,"Barbeque Bob is not just one of the best around the Boston area, but one of the very best anywhere, period!" The late, great West Coast blues harmonica giant and Alligator recording artist William Clarke called his playing "powerful and well focused." Bob has appeared with: "Fried Green Tomatoes" soundtrack CD on MCA 1991 (on the tune, "Rooster Blues," with Peter Wolf and Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters) "Right Here And Now" Two Bones & A Pick, 1996 "Butter Up 'N' Go" Two Bones & A Pick, 1998 "Get On 'Board" Blues Express, 1998 Look for his upcoming release on the Wham label "Live At The Waterfront Festival." You can visit his website for the notice or get on the email mailing list at newsletter@barbequebob.com. You can also contact Ron Martinez at info@whamrecords.com for further information regarding this release. bbq bob
He's written books on New Orleans icon Ernie K-Doe and the Zydeco culture of south Louisiana. He spearheaded the career revival of the Hackberry Ramblers, producing and playing drums with the Cajun band for eighteen years culminating in their Grammy nomination after 70 years together. Ben is attracted to offbeat characters and cultural ephemera, so of course he winds up in the Ring Room with the Troubled Men. Topics include the Super Bowl, Tom Flores' Hall of Fame snub, corrupt institutions, a Bible reading, a cyberattack, a book plug, a Christmas commercial, Rico Watts, “White Boy, Black Boy,” Clifton Chenier, “Jole Blon,” string bands, MTV Live, a neighborhood threat, disaster tourism, the Grand Ole Opry, a last road trip, a Beach Boys protest, liner notes, Chicago blues time, Sunnyland Slim, Jazz Fest interviews, losing peers, a false memory, publishing deals, false documents, a missing finger, and much more. Support the podcast by contributing [here](https://www.paypal.me/troubledmenpodcast) Subscribe, review, and rate(5 stars) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or most podcast aggregators. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Outro music: “Bill's Boogie Woogie” by Boogie Bill Webb and “Poor Hobo” by the Hackberry Ramblers from the album “Deep Water”
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
