Podcasts about Tampa Red

Hokum bands of the 1920s and '30s created a brand of urban folk tunes called “jug band music” that famously blended the sounds of the plantation and the church with those of the swing, swerve and sway of nascent jazz.And no one did it better than those Flood heroes The Memphis Jug Band, formed in 1927 by Beale Street guitar/harmonica player Will Shade. Shade was also known as Son Brimmer, a nickname given to him by his grandmother Annie Brimmer (“son” being short for grandson). The name stuck when other members of the band noticed how the sun bothered him and he used the brim of a hat to shade his eyes.The Ohio Valley InfluenceIncidentally, Will Shade first heard jug band music in our part of the country, on the 1925 recordings by Louisville's Dixieland Jug Blowers, and he wanted to take that sound south.“He was excited by what he heard,” Wikipedia notes, “and felt that bringing this style of music to his hometown of Memphis could be promising. He persuaded a few local musicians, though still reluctant, to join him in creating one of the first jug bands in Memphis.”While Shade was the constant, the rest of his band's personnel varied from day to day, as he booked gigs and arranging recording sessions.Some players remained a long time. For instance, Charlie Burse (nicknamed "Laughing Charlie," "Uke Kid Burse" and "The Ukulele Kid”) recorded some 60 sides with the MJB. Others — like Memphis Minnie and Hattie Hart — used the band as a training ground before going on to make careers of their own.Street MusicThe Memphis Jug Band's venues, as The Corner Jug Store web site noted, included “street corners, juke joints, city nightclubs, political rallies, private parties, hotel ballrooms, medicine shows and riverboats,” and it cut many styles and repertoires to suit its varied audiences.Most of all, the MJB's sound was the music of the street, as demonstrated in the open lines of their wonderful “4th Street Mess Around,” recorded in May 1930 for Victor by Ralph Peer: Go down Fourth until you get to Vance, Ask anybody about that brand new dance. The girls all say, “You're going my way, It's right here for you, here's your only chance.”And what was that “brand new dance?” Shoot, take your pick! The Eagle Rock, the turkey trot and fox trot, camel walk and Castle Walk, the Charleston and the Lindy Hop were all stirring the feet and wiggling the hips of listeners and players in the ‘20 and ‘30s.But Mess Around?But what's a “mess around?” Well, as we reported here earlier, New Orleans jazzman Wingy Manone in his wonderful autobiography called Trumpet on the Wing, talked about watching people dance the mess-around at the fish fries of his youth in the Crescent City at the beginning of the 20th century.“The mess-around,” said Wingy, “was a kind of dance where you just messed around with your feet in one place, letting your body do most of the work, while keeping time by snapping fingers with one hand and holding a slab of fish in the other!” Now, that's an image.Our Take on the TuneThe Flood first started messing around jug band tunes nearly 50 Springs ago, when the band was still a youngster. Before their juncture with juggery, the guys played mainly old folk songs and some Bob Dylan and John Prine and a smattering of radio tunes from folks like James Taylor and The Eagles. But then they discovered some fine old recordings by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, by groups like The Mississippi Sheiks and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, and most especially the great Memphis Jug Band. Ever since then, The Flood's musical buffet table has been a lot bigger, with tunes like this one from the warmup at last week's rehearsal.More Jugginess?Of course, The Flood's jug band music mission has continued. If today's song and story have you ready to join the campaign, check out The Hokum channel on the free Radio Floodango music streaming service which has dozens of jug band tunes ready to rock you. Click here to tune it in and you'll be ready to sing along at the next Flood fest. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Rick Rodriguez and and Gus Martinez (formerly of General Cigar Company), founded West Tampa Tobacco Company in 2022.  They debuted the White and Black series in 2022 at the PCA trade show in Las Vegas.  In 2023, West Tampa released a limited edition cigar using a Mexican San Andres wrapper along with Nicaraguan tobacco.  The Red series is an offshoot of that cigar using the same wrapper, but different binder and filler.  This is what West Tampa says about the Red: Like its predecessors, White & Black, Red delivers a flavor bomb with enhanced body that is a perfect addition to the West Tampa line-up. From mild to full bodied, creamy to spicey, West Tampa now offers something foreveryone. Rick Rodriguez, master blender and co-owner, is especially excited about this release. “West Tampa Red gave me the opportunity to sit down with the factory and really focus on creating a blend that I enjoy.” “Normally when I blend cigars, I don't blend for what I like, I blend cigars for what my fans enjoy. Red will be a reflection of what I believe is the next piece to lay in the West Tampa puzzle, a full-bodied cigar that delivers the full flavor consumers have come to enjoy from West Tampa.” Last year, West Tampa released a lancero in the Black, White, and Red.  The lanceros come in a 7 x 40 size with an MSRP of $10.99. Specifications Wrapper: San Andres Mexican Binder: Nicaraguan Condega Filler: Nicaraguan Condega Viso, Esteli Viso, Esteli Ligero Country of Origin: Nicaragua Factory: Garmendia Cigars Vitola:  lancero Size:  7 x 40 MSRP:  $10.99 Let's Get Pairing reviewed the Red here Cigar Coop reviewed the Red Toro here Final Score:  85  

Rick Rodriguez and and Gus Martinez (formerly of General Cigar Company), founded West Tampa Tobacco Company in 2022.  They debuted the White and Black series in 2022 at the PCA trade show in Las Vegas.  In 2023, West Tampa released a limited edition cigar using a Mexican San Andres wrapper along with Nicaraguan tobacco.  The Red series is an offshoot of that cigar using the same wrapper, but different binder and filler.  This is what West Tampa says about the Red: Like its predecessors, White & Black, Red delivers a flavor bomb with enhanced body that is a perfect addition to the West Tampa line-up. From mild to full bodied, creamy to spicey, West Tampa now offers something foreveryone. Rick Rodriguez, master blender and co-owner, is especially excited about this release. “West Tampa Red gave me the opportunity to sit down with the factory and really focus on creating a blend that I enjoy.” “Normally when I blend cigars, I don't blend for what I like, I blend cigars for what my fans enjoy. Red will be a reflection of what I believe is the next piece to lay in the West Tampa puzzle, a full-bodied cigar that delivers the full flavor consumers have come to enjoy from West Tampa.” Last year, West Tampa released a lancero in the Black, White, and Red.  The lanceros come in a 7 x 40 size with an MSRP of $10.99. Specifications Wrapper: San Andres Mexican Binder: Nicaraguan Condega Filler: Nicaraguan Condega Viso, Esteli Viso, Esteli Ligero Country of Origin: Nicaragua Factory: Garmendia Cigars Vitola:  lancero Size:  7 x 40 MSRP:  $10.99 Let's Get Pairing reviewed the Red here Cigar Coop reviewed the Red Toro here Final Score:  85

For many decades, whenever anyone at a Flood gathering was celebrating a birthday, the guys turned to David Peyton to lead them in a rousing rendition of … no, oh, hell no, not THAT song… (Does this bunch really look like “Happy Birthday to You” people?) No, Br'er Peyton suggested a much more appropriate nativity-observing song for the Flood flock. Not only that, Dave enhanced the tune with his own special touch, the addition of a juicy reference to a sex scandal that was rocking West Virginia politics. More on that little tidbit in a moment.For now, you can hear Dave's birthday tune — a sassy 1930s hokum number — by scrolling back to the top of this article and click the Play button on the video that Flood Manager Pamela Bowen shot 14 years ago this week. The occasion for Pamela's footage was a housewarming at the clubhouse at the Wyngate retirement village where devoted Flood fans Norman and Shirley Davis had just moved. For the fun evening, about 30 of the Davises' new neighbors were in the audience. Among them were guitarist Jacob Scarr's grandparents who were also new residents. The senior Scarrs had been regulars at Flood gigs ever since their grandson's joined the band several years earlier.The SongA highlight of the evening was Peyton's performance of the birthday song; The Flood's version of “You Can't Get That Stuff No More” with Charlie Bowen and Michelle Hoge's harmonies and solos by Dave, Jacob, Joe Dobbs and Doug Chaffin.Back in 2003, when a take on the tune was included on the I'd Rather Be Flooded album, the band described it as a 1932 Tampa Red/Georgia Tom song. That was correct as far as it went, but a little deeper research would have taught the guys that the song actually was written and recorded a year or two earlier by a remarkable young singer/actor/comedian named Sam Theard.Performing well into the 1970s under assorted stage names — including Lovin' Sam and Spo-Dee-O-Dee — Theard was born in New Orleans in 1904. Before he was 20, he was performing with a circus, then working in theaters and nightclubs.Meeting up with Flood heroes Tampa Red and Cow Cow Davenport, Theard recorded one of his best known songs — "(I'll Be Glad When You're Dead) You Rascal You” — for Brunswick in 1929. Over the years that song was covered by everyone from Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and The Mills Brothers to Fats Domino, Dr. John and Taj Mahal.In the 1930s and '40s, using the name Spo-Dee-O-Dee, Theard was a regular as a comedian at New York's Apollo Theater.It was during this period that he co-wrote his next famous song, “Let the Good Times Roll,” with Louis Jordan, who recorded it with his Tympany Five in 1946. In 1961 at the 3rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony, Ray Charles won a Grammy for his version of that tune.In the 1950s, Theard wrote for a number of jazz greats, including Hot Lips Page, Count Basie, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Roy Eldridge.Then in the last decade of his life, Theard was discovered by television, appearing in episodes of a variety of shows, including “Sanford and Son” and “Little House of Prairie.”The Ickie Frye InfusionBut you're still thinking about that political sex scandal, aren't you? The one that Peyton worked into The Flood's version of “You Can't Get That Stuff No More”? Okay, here's that story:The original song, as recorded in 1932 by Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, included this verse: There goes Joe with a great big knife Somebody been messin' round with his wife.However, when The Flood recorded it in a marathon studio session in Charleston in November 2003, Dave sang the verse as: There's Ickie Frye with a great long knife. Somebody been a-messin' round with his wife…Uh, Ickie who? Sure, that's not a well-known name today, but if you were a news-reading West Virginian in 2003, you certainly would have known about Phillip “Ickie” Frye, a bass-playing TV/computer repairman who had just blown up Gov. Bob Wise's political career. Newspapers across the state trumpeted the news of how Frye revealed that his wife — state employee Angela Mascia, in charge of European projects for the state development office — was having an extramarital affair with the governor.Red-faced, Wise admitted his infidelity. “I apologize deeply,” Wise said, “to the people of our state for my actions. In my private life, I have let many people down." The following year, Frye even filed to run for governor to "dog Wise," he said, over the affair, but he dropped out when Wise himself announced he would not seek re-election. Soon after The Flood's album was released, Ickie Frye emailed Peyton to thank him for the shout-out on the tune. The ex-governor had no comment. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Today's show features music performed by Tampa Red and Sarasota Slim

One of the most curious and complicated characters on the great American musical landscape is Thomas A. Dorsey.A deeply religious man, Dorsey often is called “the father of gospel music,” because he inspired a movement that popularized bluesy gospel songs in churches across America starting in the mid-20th century.Some 3,000 songs — a third of them gospel — were written by Dorsey in his 90 years, including “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley.” Now, then, about those other 2,000 songs ….Recording as “Georgia Tom,” Dorsey also was instrumental in the early days of secular blues. With his partner “Tampa Red,” he helped popularize the sexy, happy hokum music of the 1920s and ‘30s with tunes like “Somebody's Been Using That Thing,” “Dead Cat on the Line.” and “The Duck — Yas, Yas, Yas.”In the Beginning….Born in the rural Georgia town of Villa Rica, Dorsey grew up in a religious family, but gained most of his musical experience playing blues piano at barrelhouses and rowdy parties in and around Atlanta, where the family moved when Thomas was eight years old. As a young man, Dorsey began attending vaudeville theater shows that featured blues musicians, with whom he informally studied. Despite being meagerly compensated for his efforts, Thomas played at rent parties, house parties and brothels.Seeking a greater challenge, in 1919 Dorsey moved to Chicago, where he discovered that his brand of playing was unfashionable compared to jazz's newer uptempo styles. Faced with more competition for jobs, Dorsey turned to composing. In 1920 he published his first piece, called "If You Don't Believe I'm Leaving, You Can Count the Days I'm Gone,” making him one of the first musicians to copyright blues music.Dorsey also copyrighted his first religious piece in 1922 (a song called “If I Don't Get There"), but he quickly found that sacred music could not financially sustain him, at least not in the Roarin' Twenties, so he continued working the dives and playing the blues.Enter Ma RaineyDorsey's big break came in 1923 when he was hired as the pianist and leader of The Wild Cats Jazz Band accompanying Ma Rainey, a charismatic and bawdy blues shouter who by then had been performing professionally for 20 years.When Rainey and The Wild Cats opened at Chicago's largest black theater, Dorsey remembered the night as "the most exciting moment in my life,” according to his biographer Michael W. Harris.Dorsey worked with Rainey and her band for two years, composing and arranging her music in the blues style as well as vaudeville and jazz to please audiences' tastes. Often at his side was a new member of the band, Hudson “Tampa Red” Whitaker, a blues guitarist who in 1928 would become Dorsey's recording partner for five years.Rainey enjoyed enormous popularity touring with her hectic schedule, singing about lost loves and hard times. She interacted with her audiences, who were often so enthralled they stood up and shouted back at her while she sang.But Dorsey increasingly had misgivings about the suggestive lyrics of the songs he and Red were writing. Finally, Thomas left the tour and tried to market his new sacred music. He printed thousands of copies of his songs to sell directly to churches and publishers, even going door to door, but he still couldn't make it work.About This SongDorsey returned to the blues in 1928, but this time in the recording studios in the persona of “Georgia Tom.” The first Paramount sessions for him and Tampa Red were the last ones for Ma Rainey. In fact, one of the last things the great blues singer ever recorded was this new Thomas Dorsey composition.Nowadays for vinyl collectors, Rainey's “Black Eye Blues” is a rare find. That's because Ma's September 1928 recording of the song wasn't released until July 1930. By then, the Great Depression was raging. Rainey had left the business (retiring to her Columbus, Ga., home). Paramount was ending too; the studio ceased operation in 1932.While audio of the record was later preserved on blues compilation albums (and now on YouTube), the song itself has had a sketchy history. Over the years, the controversial subject matter — domestic violence — has made it uncomfortable for many singers to tackle, especially when dealing with Dorsey's no-compromise lyrics: You low-down alligator, you watch and sooner or later I'm gonna catch you with your britches down!When folkie Judy Henske recorded it in 1964, for instance, her producers at Elektra changed the title to "Low Down Alligator.” Similarly, when Odetta recorded the song two years earlier, she also found the title a bit too much for early 1960s sensibilities. On the Riverside label, instead of “Black Eye Blues,” the song was listed as “Hogan's Alley,” based on Dorsey's opening line (Down in Hogan's Alley lived Miss Nancy Ann….)Hogan's AlleyWhich raises a question. Where is “Hogan's Alley,” anyway?Many cities (from Vancouver to Virginia) have one, but historian Robert Lewis Miesen writes, “Rather than being the name of a person, ‘Hogan's Alley' was a derogatory 19th century label, much as one might use ‘skid row,' ‘ghetto' or ‘hood' today.”He noted that in the same spirit back in 1895, artist Richard F. Outcault — father of the modern comic strip — placed his “Yellow Kid” character in his “Hogan's Alley” cartoons, which appeared weekly in The New York World, starring rambunctious slum kids in the streets.Our Take on the TuneMeanwhile in Floodlandia, when the whole band can't get together — like last week, when it was just Danny, Randy and Charlie — it's an opportunity to lay back and explore tunes not usually on the practice list.In Flood years, this song dates back nearly a half century, to when the fellows were first starting to fool with the hokum tunes of the 1920s and ‘30s.Here's “Black Eye Blues” from last week's gathering. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  | Skinner & T'witch  | We Need A New New Year (Radio Edit)  | We Need A New New Year  | 3:00 AM  | New Years Resolution  | Singles  |   |   | The Pawn Shop Saints  | New Year's Eve, Somewhere in the Midwest  | Ordinary Folks  |   | St. Louis Jimmy with Roosevelt Sykes  | (New Year's) Resolution Blues  | Piano Blues Orgy  |   | Too Slim And The Taildraggers  | New Years Blues  | Blue Heart  |   | Big Harp George  | 11 It's New Year's Eve  | Big Harp George Does Christmas  | Anton O'Donnell and Charlotte Marshall  | New Year or Halloween  | Christmas Ain't The Same  | Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong  | 18 What Are You Doing New Year's Eve  | Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong  | Zac Harmon  | New Year's Day  | Long As I Got My Guitar  | Catfood Records  | The Qualities  | Happy New Year To You  | Papa Ain't No Santa Claus, Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree  | Tampa Red  | Christmas And New Year Blues  | Papa Ain't No Santa Claus, Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree  | Ligntnin Hopkins  | Happy New Year  | Rockin' Blues Christmas  | BB King  | Bringing In A Brand New Year  | A Christmas Celebration of Hope  | Steve Mayone  | New Years Resolution  | Sideways Rain  |   | The Two Charlies  | Happy New Year Blues  | Charley Jordan Vol 3 (1935-1937)

Interview with Arlen Roth 2024 Arlen Roth is a true guitar legend; part of the list of who he's recorded and toured with contains folks like Simon & Garfunkel (together and individually), John Prine, Phoebe Snow, Bob Dylan, Bee Gees, Don McLean, Levon Helm, Ry Cooder, Duane Eddy, Danny Gatton, Janis Ian, Dusty Springfield, John Sebastian, Johnny Winter and countless more. He also appeared with Ramblin' Jack Elliot and Patti Smith in the Martin Scorcese Rolling Thunder film, created the guitar parts and was consultant and teacher to Ralph Macchio for the legendary blues film, Crossroads. In 2016, he wrote and performed an acoustic guitar piece with Daveed Diggs and Leslie Odom, Jr. of Hamilton for ESPN. Arlen was voted in the Top 100 most Influential guitarists of all time by Vintage Guitar Magazine and top 50 all-time acoustic guitarists by Gibson.com. Now, on Arlen Roth's 20th solo album and his fifth all-acoustic offering, he's bringing rootsy acoustic music to new heights on Playing Out the String, set for release September 27 and distributed by MVD. The new album was recorded, mixed and mastered by Alex Salzman, who also contributes keyboards to the mix.  Arlen's previous album, Super Soul Session, with bass legend Jerry Jemmott, sat atop the Blues and Soul charts for 22 straight weeks, and was in the Top 5 for 55 straight weeks this past year. Arlen has also been at the forefront of guitar and music education, with 10 best-selling books, and he was the first-ever to offer video instruction with the giants of the music industry through his “Hot Licks” company, which he started in 1979, and has had millions of students worldwide. His column for Guitar Player magazine was voted #1 by the largest margin of readers from 1982 to 1992, and was also turned into a best-selling book, Hot Guitar. On Playing Out the String,  this all-acoustic, mostly solo album is very personal to Arlen and is really like getting an up-close "at home" concert in your living room. On it, he paints with broad strokes across several genres of music he loves. From "Old Timey" Norman Blake material to country blues from Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and Tampa Red; he even makes you feel at home with Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin'" and gives his 12-string guitar a workout on the archetypical, "Walk Right In." https://www.arlenroth.com  

The word hokum originated in vaudeville to mean a risqué performance laced with wordplay, euphemisms and double entendre.When it appeared on the label of a 1928 hit for Vocalion Records by a new group called Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band, the term rapidly entered the jazzy lexicon of The Roarin' Twenties.When the group moved on to Paramount Records as The Famous Hokum Boys, it quickly picked up imitators at other studios, often using variations on the same word in their own names. Eventually “hokum” came to describe an entire species of novelty tunes, all those sexy, silly blues of the 1920s and '30s.About Tampa RedHokum's first star, Tampa Red, was one of the most prolific blues artists of his era, recording some 335 songs, 75 percent between 1928 and 1942. Tampa Red was born Hudson Woodbridge in Smithville, Georgia, near Albany in the first decade of the 20th century. When their parents died, he and his older brother Eddie moved to Tampa, Florida, to be reared by their aunt and their grandmother. There he also adopted their surname, Whittaker.Emulating Eddie, Hudson Whittaker played guitar around the Tampa area, especially inspired by an old street musician called Piccolo Pete, who taught the youngster his first blues licks.After perfecting a slide guitar technique, he moved to Chicago in 1925 and began working as a street musician himself. He took the name "Tampa Red" to celebrate to his childhood home.Enter TomRed's big break came when he was hired to accompany established blues star Ma Rainey. There he also met pianist/composer Thomas A. Dorsey, who as working as “Georgia Tom.” Red and Tom became fast friends and music partners.Tom introduced Red to records exec J. Mayo Williams, who arranged a studio session in 1928. Their first effort was a dud, but their next song — the cheeky “It's Tight Like That” — became a national sensation, selling a million copies. Red later recalled seeing people standing outside of record stores just waiting to buy the disc. Since the song was composed by both Red and Tom, they shared $4,000 in royalties from that single song. (That would be about $75,000 today.)While his partnership with Dorsey ended in 1932, Red remained much in demand in recording studios throughout the ‘30s and ‘40s. He was later "rediscovered" in the blues revival of the late 1950s, along with other early blues artists, like Son House and Skip James. Red made his last recordings in 1960.About the SongTampa Red recorded “Somebody's Been Using That Thing” in 1934, but unlike so many of the tunes he waxxed, he didn't write this one.Instead, the song was composed and recorded five years earlier by a curious genre-blending mandolinist named Al Miller.Starting in 1927, Miller played and sang in a style that combined elements of country, blues and jazz on sides for Black Patti records. His eclectic mix of sounds and material gave way to a heavy concentration on bawdry once he arrived at Brunswick for a series of recordings with his Market Street Boys. Miller recorded his “Somebody's Been Using That Thing” on March 8, 1929. It was his big seller. Five years later, after Tampa Red also scored with it, the song even started attracting the attention of artists in the fledgling country and western genre. In 1937, for instance, Milton Brown, called by some “the father of Western swing,” did a rendition for Decca. The following year, The Callahan Brothers (Walter and Homer) of Madison County, Ky., recorded it on the Conqueror label.Our Take on the TuneIf there's such a thing as a "standard" in jug band music, ”Somebody's Been Using That Thing” is certainly one of them. While The Flood's heroes recorded it 90 years ago, the band didn't get around to doing it until back in 2009 when Joe Dobbs recommended it. That was right after he received a recording of it by our old buddy, Ed Light, and his DC-area band with one great name: The All New Genetically Altered Jug Band. We've been Floodifying the tune ever since, as this track from a recent rehearsal demonstrates. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Sintonía: "Save The Roach For Me" - Buck Washington"Sendin´ the Vipers" - Mezz Mezzrow & His Orchestra; "I´m Gonna Get High" - Tampa Red & The Chicago Five; "Spinach Song (I Didn´t Like It The First Time)" - Julia Lee & Her Boy Friends; "Do You Dig My Jive" - Sam Price & His Texas Bluesicians; "Knockin Myself Out" - Yack Taylor; "Reefer Man" - Harlan Lattimore & His Connie´s Inn Orchestra; "The Man From Harlem" - Cab Calloway Orchestra; "If You´re A Viper" - Bob Howard & His Boys; "Light Up" - Buster Balley´s Rhythm Busters; "Viper Mad" - Sidney Bechet with Noble Sissle´s Swingers; "Weed Smokers Dream" - The Harlem Hamfats; "The ´G´ Man Got The ´T´ Man" - Cee Pee Johnson & Band; "All The Jive Is Gone" - Andy Kirk & His Twelve Clouds Of Joy; "Suff Is Here" - Georgia White; "Weed" - Bea Foote; "Knockin´ Myself Out" - Lil Green; "If You´re a Viper" - Lorrain Walton Todas las músicas extraídas del primer CD de la recopilación (2xCD) "Dope & Glory - Reefer Songs from the 30s & 40s" (Trikont, 2002)Escuchar audio

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |  | J.D. Harris  | The Grey Eagle  | The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of (disc 1)  | Lonnie Johnson  | Lonesome Road  | Lonnie Johnson Tomorrow Night 1970  | Tampa Red  | Through Train Blues  | Tampa Red Vol. 1 (1928-1929)  |   | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Mean Old Frisco  | The Blues of Lightnin' Hopkins (1967)  | Big Bill Broonzy  | Sad Letter Blues  | Chicago 1937-1938 (CD8)  1937-1940 Part 2  | Leecan and Cooksey  | Dirty Guitar Blues  | A Richer Tradition - Country Blues & String Band Music, 1923-1928  | Corey Harris  | Jack O' Diamonds  | Fish Ain't Bitin'  |   |   | Half Deaf Clatch  | Storm Brewin  | The Blues Continuum  |   | Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee  | Worried Life Blues (Recorded Live At The Free Trade Hall, Manchester  | Chris Barber Presents The Blues Legacy Lost & Found Series  | Jake Leg Jug Band  | I Love Me  | Break A leg  |   |   | Dik Banovich  | Pay Day  | Run to You  |   |   | Blind Blake  | Fancy Tricks  | All The Recorded Sides  |   | Tom Doughty  | Come Back Baby  | You Can't Teach An Old Dog  |   | Bluesblabber  | The Ballad of Mr. Wright  | Like It Raw  |   |   | Bessie Jones & with the Georgia Sea Island Singers  | That Suits Me  | Get In Union  | Alan Lomax Archives/Association For Cultural Equity  | Peg Leg Howell  | Coal Man Blues  | Country Southern Blues  | 

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |   | Lightnin' Hopkins  | The Trouble Blues  | Ligntnin' Hopkins In New York  | Candid  |   |   | Sonny Boy Williamson  | I'm Trying To Make London My Home  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD4  | Ida Cox  | Death Letter Blues  | Ida Cox Vol. 2 1924-1925  |   | Joe Bonamassa  | High Water Everywhere  | Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House  | Tampa Red  | Stormy Sea Blues  | Tampa Red Vol. 7 1935-1936  |   | John James  | One Long Happy Night  | Cafe Vienna  |   |   | Furry Lewis  | Old Dog Blue  | Furry Lewis, Bukka White & Friends Party! at Home - 1968  | Merle Travis  | Cannonball-Rag  | Merle-Travis: Ash Grove 12-9-66  | Josh White  | Ball and Chain Blues  | The Elektra Years  |   |   | Scott Low  | Roll On  | Appalachian Blues  |   |   | Charles -Cow Cow- Davenport  | State Street Jive [Take A]  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 1  | Raphael Callaghan  | Can't Afford To Live  | Said And Done  |   |   | Scott Low  | Winter Spring  | Appalachian Blues  |   |   | Rev Gary Davis  | Improvisation Slow Blues In E  | The Sun Of Our Life - Solos Songs and Sermons 1955-57  | R.L. Burnside  | Shake 'em On Down  |   |   |   | Jo Ann Kelly  | I Looked Down the Line (And I Wondered)  | Blues And Gospel: Rare and Unreleased Recordings

Chris and Adam take a cigar they both love and try to find the perfect pairing for it...and they may have struck gold! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/perfectpairingpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/perfectpairingpodcast/support

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  | Sue Foley  | Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie  | One Guitar Woman  |   | Joe Bonamassa  | Richmond  | Acoustic Evening at the Vienna Opera House  | Tampa Red  | It's Red Hot  | Bottleneck Guitar 1928-1937  | Big Walter Horton  | Blues Harp Shuffle  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD5  | Sue Foley  | Freight Train  | One Guitar Woman  |   | Mary Flower  | Raise the Devil  | Instrumental Breakdown  | Robert Johnson  | Honeymoon Blues  | The Complete Recordings;  The Centennial Collection  | Half Deaf Clatch  | Coney Island Baby  | Songs From The Clatch Cave -Vol 3  | Jo Carley &The Old Dry Skulls  | Little Limbs Of Satan  | Voodoo Bones & Vaudeville Blues MP3's  | Snooks Eaglin  | Drifting Blues  | New Orleans Street Singer  | Sue Foley  | Motherless Child Blues  | One Guitar Woman  |   | Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang  | Two Tone Stomp  | Jazz Legends  |   | Adam Franklin  | Tuckin' With My Baby (On A Friday  | England's Newest Hit Maker - The Best Of Adam Franklin  | Jimmy Yancey  | 1. Yancey Stomp  | Blues and Boogie  |   | Sue Foley  | Nothing in Rambling  | One Guitar Woman  |   | Big Bill Broonzy  | Beedle Um Bum  | Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order Vol. 1

Chris and Adam take a cigar they both love and try to find the perfect pairing for it...and they may have struck gold! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/perfectpairingpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/perfectpairingpodcast/support

In blues parlance, the term “easy rider” is code for … oh, well, for many things. Maybe a rovin' gambler or a lover, maybe a pimp … (Y'all just talk among yourselves and let your imagination gallop away with ya.)Easy riders started appearing in blues songs more than a century ago. W.C. Handy famously featured an easy rider in his great “Yellow Dog Blues” back in 1915. But, as we noted in an earlier Flood Watch article, that great old blues — which Bessie Smith would memorialize with her classic 1925 Columbia recording of it — was written in answer to an earlier ragtimey blues called “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone,” released in 1913 by its composer, Shelton Brooks.Meet Shelton BrooksShelton Brooks was one of the most successful Black songwriters of the era before jazz. An African-Canadian, he had a recording career as an OKeh Records artist in the 1920s, but today he is better remembered for his songwriting chops.His most successful songs were "Some of These Days" (1911), "All Night Long" (1912), "Walkin' the Dog" (1916) and especially "Darktown Strutters' Ball" (1917), which sold more than 3 million copies as sheet music.About This SongBrooks' “I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone” was first popularized on the vaudeville stage by Sophie Tucker.We base our version of the song on a July 9, 1929, recording by our hokum band heroes Tampa Red on guitar and Georgia Tom on piano, with jazz singer Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon doing the vocals.But perhaps the best known version of Brooks' tune came four years after that, when film siren Mae West delivered a sultry performance of it in her 1933 movie She Done Him Wrong.By the way, a legacy of Brooks' song and Handy's “Yellow Dog Blues” answer is that lines and melody from both songs started showing up in the 1920s and ‘30s in such songs as "E. Z. Rider," "See See Rider," "C. C. Rider" and "Easy Rider Blues.”Our Take on the TuneThis is the kind of song that The Flood likes the start the evening with, as we did at last week's rehearsal, because it has plenty of room for everyone to just stretch out and wail.Listen as the solos pass from Danny Cox to Sam St. Clair to Randy Hamilton. And when it's Jack Nuckols' turn, he reaches for those wooden spoons he keeps near his drum kit. See if it doesn't sound like a jazzy tap dancer has just shim-sham-shimmied into the room. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

Today's show features music performed by Tampa Red

"Reflecting on the Grateful Dead's Capitol Theatre Shows and Toby Keith smoking with Willie Nelson"Larry Michigan discusses the Grateful Dead's historic show at the Capitol Theatre on February 19, 1971. Larry reminisces about the atmosphere of the venue and the significance of the performance, highlighting the debut of several iconic Dead songs. The discussion delves into the band's evolving musical style, particularly the transition from psychedelic blues to Americana influences. He explores the historical context surrounding the show, including Mickey Hart's departure from the band and the impact of manager Lenny Hart's embezzlement. He also touches upon the significance of the show's release in the "From the Vault" series and discuss other notable releases in the Dead's catalog. Additionally, Larry provides updates on Bob Weir and Wolf Brothers' postponed performances with the National Symphony Orchestra and share news about upcoming music releases.  Grateful DeadFebruary 19, 1971 (53 years ago)Capitol TheatrePort Chester, NYGrateful Dead Live at Capitol Theatre on 1971-02-19 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive The second of the legendary six night run at the Capitol Theatre in late February, 1971:Feb. 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, and 24 INTRO:                  Loser                                Track #3                                2:55 – 4:24 Hunter/Garcia tune that was released on “Garcia”, Jerry's first solo album, in January, 1972, the last song on side one of the album.  It was a standard first set tune, part of a rotating number of Jerry first set ballads including Candyman, It Must Have Been The Roses, High Time, Row Jimmy, To Lay Me Down and others. A very sweet melodic tune that tells a great story by way of a beautiful piece of music.  SECOND time playedPlayed a total of 353 timesFirst time:  “Last”night 2.18.71Last:  June 28, 1995, The Palace of Auburn Hills, outside Detroit                               THIS SHOW: Last year we covered the Feb. 18th show famous as the debut for Bertha, Greatest Story, Loser, Wharf Rat and Playin In The Band and the Beautiful Jam out of Wharf Rat and back into Dark Star.  It was also Mickey's last show before his almost three year hiatus before he returned for the final 1974 show before the band's 1975 year off February 19th show is just as historical:  The band's first show without Mickey since he joined the band in 1967.  Many people theorize that this was Mickey's response to his father, Lenny Hart who was the band's manager stealing almost $155,000 of the band's assets before disappearing.  Although he was eventually located by a private detective hired by the band and arrested in San Diego on July 26, 1971, convicted and spent six months in jail, the money was never returned.  The song, “He's Gone” is based on Lenny Hart's embezzlement and disappearance.  Ashamed by his father's actions, Mickey left the band after the 2.18.71 Capitol Theater show returning full time in 1975.  Lenny died of natural causes on Feb. 2, 1975.  According to Dennis McNally, "Mickey went to the funeral home, cleared the room, took out the snakewood sticks that had been his inheritance, played a traditional rudimental drum piece, "The Downfall of Paris" on Lenny's coffin, and split." Starting with this show, the band became a very lean mean fighting machine with just five members (Jerry, Bobby, Phil, Bill and Pig) until Keith jointed the band seven months later in September.  On this night, the band played the five songs debuted the night before and debuted Deal and Birdsong.  Pig also has a strong showing this night leading the band through four standouts:             Hurts Me Too            Smokestack Lightning:  the third to last time it would be played with Pig in the band            Easy Wind:  the second to last time it would be played without Pig in the band            Good Lovin  This really marked the beginning of the band's hard shift away from psychedelic blues (Primal Dead) to the more Americana style music that began with Workingman's and American Beauty.  Within a year, Pig would be very ill with just enough energy left for the Europe '72 tour.  But this night, he was rocking the house like only he could do.  Here is the first of his four featured songs:  SHOW No. 1:      Hurts Me Too                                Track # 5                                2:08 – 3:42 Great showcase number for Pig featuring his singing and harp playing.  We got just a bit of Jerry's lead but all this great music is too long to fit into one clip – don't want Dan getting mad at me! "It Hurts Me Too" is a blues standard that is "one of the most interpreted blues [songs]".[1] First recorded in 1940 by Tampa Red in Chicago, the song is a mid-tempo eight-bar blues that features slide guitar. It borrows from earlier blues songs and has been recorded by many artists.  Release on May 10th with Tired of Your Reckless Ways on the B-side. In 1949, Tampa Red recorded a variation of "It Hurts Me Too", titled "When Things Go Wrong with You".[9] It was recast in the style of a Chicago blues, with electric guitar and a more up to date backing arrangement. The song was a hit and reached number nine on Billboard'sRhythm & Blues Records chart in 1949.[10] (The original "It Hurts Me Too" was released before Billboard or a similar reliable service began tracking such releases, so it is difficult to gauge which version was more popular, although the former's title won out over the latter's.) Although the song retained the refrain "When things go wrong, so wrong with you, it hurts me too", Tampa Red varied the rest of the lyrics somewhat. This would become the pattern for future versions, in which succeeding artists would interpret the song with some of their own lyrics. Noted covers:            Elmore James            Junior Wells            Grateful Dead – with Pig singing the vocals.  Was first released by the Dead on Europe '72 album.  After Pig left the band, the song was retired.             The Dead played the song a total of 59 times            First:    May 19, 1966 at the Avalon Ballroom, San Francisco            Last:     May 24, 1972 at the Lyceum Ballroom in London (last show of Europe '72 tour             “FROM THE VAULT”: This entire show was released by the Dead as “Three From The Vault” in 2007.  The “From The Vault” series, launched by the Band in 1991 with One From The Vault – August 13, 1975 at The Great American Music Hall, with first live performance of the songs from Blues For Allah.  In 1992 the Dead released “Two From The Vault” – August 23 and 24, 1968 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.  Then, along came Dick Latvala and his Dead scene changing Dick's Picks series which was wildly popular, so much so that the In The Vault Series was put on hold.  For 15 years.  Until 2007 when they circled back to the original series of live releasees with Three From The Vault which features the same show we are talking about today from the Capitol Theatre.  That was it for In The Vault releases.  The Dead did have several other “Vault” like releases – multi-track recordings including Hundred Year Haul, Dozin' At The Knick, Fallout From the Phil Zone, Terrapin Station, Live At the Fillmore East 2.11.69, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grateful Dead, Nightfall of Diamonds, Trucking Up To Buffalo and so many more. They just stopped calling them “From The Vault”.  Dick's Picks, of course would go on to have a total of 36 releases, the last few releases coming after Dick's death in 1999.  Which led into the still wildly popular Dave's Picks from David Lemieux who took over for Dick and now has 49 releases and still going strong.  And “short” lived, but generally popular  “Roadtrips” series.  And all of the box sets that are all amazing but too numerous to name except for the Complete Recordings, the four-night run at the Fillmore West from Feb. 27 to March 2, 1969 – four shows with the band at the peak of Primal Dead, and Europe '72 which consists of the live recordings for all of the shows on that tour.  Another milestone for the Dead in terms of their ever expanding reputation for Jam Band, psychedelic, and amazing song catalogue, even at that “early” stage of the band's existence.  SHOW No. 2:      Playin In The Band                                Track # 7                                2:23 – 4:05                                            By:  Weir and Hunter "Playing in the Band" is a song by the Grateful Dead. The lyrics were written by Robert Hunter and rhythm guitaristBob Weir composed the music, with some assistance from percussionist Mickey Hart.[1] The song first emerged in embryonic form on the self-titled 1971 live albumGrateful Dead. It then appeared in a more polished form on Ace, Bob Weir's first solo album (which included every Grateful Dead member except Ron "Pigpen" McKernan).The instrumental break of "Playing in the Band" was introduced as early as the February 19, 1969 "Celestial Synapse" show at the Fillmore West, in which it appears somewhat indistinct from the preceding and following jams.[5] The completed song was also included on Mickey Hart's 1972 solo album Rolling Thunder within "The Main Ten", making reference to the song's time signature of 10/4.  "The Main Ten" appears on Dick's Picks Volume 16, from their performance at the Fillmore West on November 8, 1969. On that set, it appears in the middle of "Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)".During a Bob Weir and Wolf Bros concert livestream on February 12, 2021, Weir credited David Crosby with the composition of the main riff. Weir stated, "David Crosby came up with the seminal lick... and then he left. We were out at Mickey's barn. So Mickey said, 'Make a song out of that'. Next day, I had it" It has since become one of the best-known Grateful Dead numbers and a standard part of their repertoire, usually as a second set pre-drums jumping off point for jams to who knows where. According to Deadbase X, it ranks fourth on the list of songs played most often in concert by the band with over 600 performances. If you download this show from Archive.org, and play this track, at the 3:20 mark during the mid-song jam, they get to the point where they would normally dive back in but instead, Bobby plays on for an almost additional 30 seconds and then just dives back in to the song.  He is clearly still working it out.  Over the course of the Europe '72 tour, it was played almost every night as Bobby finally worked it outThis is all really good stuff. SECOND time ever played 661 times (No. 1)                First – “last: night's show, Feb. 18, 1971 Capitol Theatre                Last:       July 5, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheater, Maryland Heights, MO outside of St. Louis.                SHOW No. 3:      Greatest Story Ever Told (The Pump Song)                              Track #13                           Start – 1:41               By Weir, Hart and Robert Hunter (some give credit to Rev. Gary Davis)               Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis (born Gary D. Davis, April 30, 1896 – May 5, 1972),[1] was a blues and gospel singer who was also proficient on the banjo, guitar and harmonica. Born in Laurens, South Carolina and blind since infancy, Davis first performed professionally in the Piedmont blues scene of Durham, North Carolina in the 1930s, then converted to Christianity and became a minister. After moving to New York in the 1940s, Davis experienced a career rebirth as part of the American folk music revival that peaked during the 1960s. Davis' most notable recordings include "Samson and Delilah"[2] and "Death Don't Have No Mercy" Released on:AceRolling Thunder, as "The Pump Song"Dead SetDick's Pick's, vol. 6Europe '72 box setLots of other releases              Per Hunter:  "Also known as "Pumpman" and "Moses"--I wrote this to the rhythm of the pump in Mickey Hart's well."                Released on Ace on May 1, 1972              First song on the album with Bobby setting a rocking tone              Another tune that was played almost every night of and refined during the Europe '72 tour                             283 times              First:  “last night” 2.18.71              Last:  June 27, 1995 at the Palace at Auburn Hills outside Detroit               SHOW No. 4:      Bird Song                                Track #15                           :42 – 2:15               By Garcia and Hunter              Second song on Garcia              Robert Hunter originally wrote the song as a tribute for Janis Joplin. Phil Lesh now sings "All I know is something like a bird within him sang", transfering it Jerry Garcia instead A regular for the Dead, and still played by Dead and Co., Bobby and Phil and Friends. Beautiful song, even for the fist time you know it's going to be special. Played 301 tines              First:  This is it!              Last:   June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA   OUTRO:                Deal                                Track #17                                Start – 1:33  May 16, 2023 by Chris Huber of Chill One of the Grateful Dead's live staples, and many gambling songs is the Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia collaboration, “Deal”. First performed on February 19th, 1971, the song was in regular rotation until the end, both for the Dead and the Jerry Garcia Band.“Deal” saw studio release as the opening track to Jerry Garcia's 1972 debut solo album, Garcia, which also contained several other classic Grateful Dead live songs including “Sugaree”, “Bird Song”, “Loser”, and “The Wheel. Although it would move around a bit in the set list early on, this debut version is consistent with the ultimate tradition of the song closing out the first set.  Even in JGB sets it was a first set closer.  And would always leave you waiting through the break to see how they were going to kick off the second set and keep the show moving along.  For a first time played, this version stays true to the version we all know and love from a few years later.                            Played 428 times              First:  This is IT              Last:  June 18, 1995, Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ Thank you. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

When The Flood first started doing this song some 40 years ago, Charlie's sweet mother asked where such an odd little tune came from. We didn't want to tell her the truth.“Mom, it was a popular party song in the late 1920s.” Well, that wasn't a complete lie. It's just that the “parties” where this song was born started very late at night and were in a part of town where nice girls generally didn't go. Stump's SongThe song we've always called “Yas Yas Duck” is an old hokum jazz tune that has been recorded under a lot of different names for nearly a century now.The first recording was made in St. Louis by the great piano pounder James “Stump” Johnson who released it in January 1929 as “The Duck Yas-Yas-Yas.” He recorded his song at least three times during his career, which ended with his death at 67 in 1969.Also in 1929, new versions started cropping up. Flood heroes Tampa Red and Georgia Tom recorded a version on May 13, 1929. That's where we learned it.But a particularly popular rendition also was done by Oliver Cobb and his Rhythm Kings on Aug. 16, 1929, about a year before his untimely death. In most versions, the song is perhaps best known for its opening lyrics: Mama bought a rooster, Thought it was a duck. Brought it to the table with its legs straight up …And, Uh, About That “Party”…Wikipedia just tells it like it is (or was). “The song,” it reports, “is a ‘whorehouse tune,' a popular St. Louis party song." (See there, mom? It says it right there! “Party song …”) The title, Wikipedia goes on, is explained by the verse that goes, Shake your shoulders, shake 'em fast, if you can't shake your shoulders, shake your yas-yas-yas.The Duck in the ‘60sFolkies learned the song in 1961 when the legendary Dave Van Ronk released it as "Yas Yas Yas" on his Van Ronk Sings album (though Dave's source was a variant recorded in the Bahamas by Blind Blake & his Royal Victoria Hotel Calypso Band, released as "Yes! Yes! Yes!" in 1951).Meanwhile, in 1967 cartoonist R. Crumb used the song in his comic strip album Zap Comix, No. 0, quoting it in the first panel of a story called "Ducks Yas Yas." Crumb also later recorded the tune with his band, The Good Tone Banjo Boys, on a transparent red vinyl 78 rpm stereo record in 1972.Our Take on the TuneFor us, “Yas Yas Duck” became a kind of connective tissue between today and our jug band roots of the 1970s and '80s. That's why we put it on our first commercial album back in 2001, and why it still gets trotted out regularly at rehearsals, just so newer folks coming to the band room can learn it. Recently, it was Jack Nuckols' turn. As you can hear here, Jack's drumming has brought us a whole new class of cool. Whether it's his tasty solos, or rocking along with Randy's bass under Charlie's vocals, or making his wise and witty contributions to the ensemble supporting Danny and Sam's solos, Jack's rhythms have us all wanting to get up and dance. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

This week on Echoes of Indiana Avenue listen to the first episode of our two-part series exploring the complete recordings of Guitar Pete Franklin – a legendary Naptown blues musician. Franklin was born in Indianapolis in 1928. His style was influenced by the early Naptown blues duo of Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell - but Franklin developed his own unique sound. On this edition, hear Franklin's early recordings with blues greats including Sunnlyand Slim and Tampa Red.

Rick Rodriguez, Master Blender for West Tampa Tobacco, joins Adam this week for an education filled pairing episode! This is one that you will not want to miss... --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dreamercigarspodcast/support

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright  |  | Charles -Cow Cow- Davenport  | Everybody Likes That Thing  | Complete Recorded Works, Vol. 2  (1929-1945) | Otis Spann  | One More Mile to Go  | The Blues Never Die!  |  | J.B. Lenoir  | Slow Down Woman  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD5 | Paul Rishell  | Special Rider Blues [Skip James]  | Talkin' Guitar  |   |  | Big Bill Broonzy  | Double Trouble Blues  | Do That Guitar Rag  |   |  | John Hammond  |  Drop Down Mama  | Timeless  |   |   |  | Lightnin' Hopkins  | I'm Comin' Home  | Morning Blues - Charley Blues Masterworks Vol. 8 | Mike Ross  | None Of Your Business  | Tennessee Transition  |  | Seasick Steve  | Man From Another Time  | Man From Another Time  |  | Henry Townsend  | Henry's Worry Blues  | Searching For Secret Heroes  | Document Records  |  | Duster Bennett  | Got A Tongue In Your Head  | Smiling Like I'm Happy (Vinyl) - 1968  | Fiona Boyes  | Easy Baby  | Fiona Boyes Box & Dice promo  |  | Half Deaf Clatch  | Astrally Challenged  | Short Songs for the Barely Conscious | Skip James  | Omaha Blues  | Studio Sessions Rare & Unreleased | Bill Abel  | Special Rider  | Celestial Train  |   |  | Tampa Red  | You Can't Come In  | Tampa Red Vol. 1 (1928-1929)  | 

Welcome to Episode 131 of The Burning Bush Podcast, where we share the message of the Bible while enjoying a good cigar. Today we're reading the New Testament book of Mark Chapter 4 with commentary from the notes in the Charles Spurgeon Study Bible, and I'm smoking the West Tampa Red Toro 6x52.Charles Spurgeon Study Bible - https://csbspurgeonstudybible.csbible.com/West Tampa Red Toro 6x52: https://www.westtampatobacco.com/Listen and subscribe at: https://www.theburningbushpodcast.comYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VoiceOverSteve/podcastsRumble: https://rumble.com/user/SteveMcHenryEmail: steve@theburningbushpodcast.com#TheBurningBush #Podcast #Scripture #Theology #Jesus #Bible #Christian #GroundworksMinistries #Cigars #BOTL #SOTL #HolySmokes #TreatsNTruth #CharlesSpurgeon #SpurgeonStyle #WestTampaTobaccoSUPPORT THE SHOW & OUR PARTNERSCash App - http://cash.app/$StevenJMcHenryVenmo - https://www.venmo.com/u/Steve-McHenry-3Paypal - http://paypal.me/SteveMcHenryTreats-N-Truth Ministry Helping those in need through the love & grace of God.Groundworks Ministries Promoting the "chapter-a-day" reading of God's Word.The Burning Bush Merchandise Store Get your Burning Bush Podcast swag here!Instacart - Groceries delivered in as little as 1 hour. Free delivery on your first order over $35.Buzzsprout - Let's get your podcast launched! Start for FREEDisclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Welcome to Episode 131 of The Burning Bush Podcast, where we share the message of the Bible while enjoying a good cigar. Today we're reading the New Testament book of Mark Chapter 4 with commentary from the notes in the Charles Spurgeon Study Bible, and I'm smoking the West Tampa Red Toro 6x52.Listen and subscribe here.Download episode here.

Con Slim Harpo, Link Wray, Tampa Red, Little Richard, Adriano Celentano, Richie Havens, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Astrud Gilberto, Jane Birkin, Benny Moré, Juanito Valderrama, José José, Mon Laferte, Jose Alfredo Jiménez, Ana Gabriel, Marta Gómez y Che Sudaka.

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Arthur Montana Taylor  | Sweet Sue (rec Chicago 18/4/46)  | Montana Taylor  |  | Tampa Red  |  It's Red Hot  | Bottleneck Guitar 1928-1937 | Lightnin' Hopkins  | Wake Up Old Lady  | Goin' Away (1963)  |  | Half Deaf Clatch  | The Elysian Blues  | Simple Songs For These Complicated Times | Seasick Steve  | Purple Shadows  | Hubcap Music  |  | Blind Willie Johnson  | If I Had My Way I'd Tear The Building Down  | The Complete Blind Willie Johnson (1 of 2) | Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee  | Hey Baby Hey Baby You're So Sweet - [ASH GROVE 1-21-1967 1ST SH  | Ash Grove 01-21-1967 1st Show | Bill Abel  | Don't You Hurt (Instrumental)  | One-Man Band  |  | Tony Joe White  | Baby Please Don't Go  | Bad Mouthin' (2018) | Andres Roots  | Thanks For Bringing Me Down  | Winter  |   |  | Washboard Sam  | Phantom Black Snake  | Washboard Swing  |  | Paul Cowley  | Preaching Blues  | Stroll Out West  |  | R. L. Burnside  | Goin' Down South  | First Recordings  |  | Lonnie Johnson  | C.C. Rider (Traditional)  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD3 | John Hammond  | Sugar Mama  | Sooner Or Later (2002 reissue) - 2002 - 320 - FC | Mississippi Fred Mc Dowell  | Highway 61  | American Folk Blues Festival 1962-1965  CD5

Lucero "Mom"Memphis Slim "Steady Rolling Blues"JD McPherson "You Must Have Met Little Caroline?"Gillian Welch "Down Along the Dixie Line"Eilen Jewell "Crooked River"Waylon Jennings "If You See Me Getting Smaller"Carla Thomas "I Take It To My Baby"boygenius "Not Strong Enough"Memphis Minnie "The Man I Love"Grateful Dead "Dark Hollow"Kitty Wells "Forever Young"Coleman Hawkins "At McKie's"Raphael Saadiq "Sure Hope You Mean It"Professor Longhair "Hey Little Girl"Jack Logan "All Grown Up"Jack Logan "I Brake For God"Steve Earle "Hometown Blues"Doc & Merle Watson "Worried Blues"Cat Power "Lived in Bars"R.E.M. "Belong"R.E.M. "Orange Crush"Marine Girls "A Place In The Sun"Tampa Red "I'm a Stranger Here"Lee Morgan "Most Like Lee"Glossary "Almsgiver"The Mountain Goats "Rat Queen"Shaver "The Earth Rolls On"Vic Chesnutt "And How"Jon Dee Graham & The Fighting Cocks "Beautifully Broken"Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit "White Man's World"Gillian Welch "Happy Mother's Day"Brown Bird "Fingers to the Bone"Bonnie Prince Billy "Easy Does It"Magnolia Electric Co. "Talk To Me Devil, Again"Magnolia Electric Co. "Memphis Moon"Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers "The Witch doctor"The Velvet Underground "I'm Waiting For The Man"Townes Van Zandt "Be Here to Love Me"Will Johnson "To the Shepard, to the Lion"Centro-Matic "If They Talk You Down"Willie Nelson "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again

The Black Crowes "Midnight From The Inside Out"Big Maybelle "Baby Won't You Please Come Home"Jimmy Reed "Honest I Do"Lucero "I Can't Stand to Leave You"Red Foley "Pin Ball Boogie"The Deslondes "Ways & Means"Billie & DeDe Pierce "I Ain't Good Looking"Loretta Lynn "Portland Oregon"Tampa Red "Mercy Mama"Valerie June "Don't It Make You Want To Go Home"Otha Turner and The Rising Star Fife and Drum Band "Shimmy She Wobble"Albert King "The Sky Is Crying"Eilen Jewell "I'm a Little Mixed Up"Amos Milburn "Milk and Water"Hank Williams "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"Sidney Bechet "In a Café On the Road to Calais"Precious Bryant "Don't Jump My Pony"Dr. John "Croker Courtbullion"The Black Keys "Sinister Kid"Flora Molton "Never Drive a Stranger from Your Door"Aretha Franklin "Groovin'"Otis Rush "Groaning the Blues"Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys "Bring It on Down to My House"The Big Three Trio "Cigareets, Whuskey. And Wild Women"Merle Haggard "I Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink"Superchunk "Makeout Bench"R.L. Burnside "Miss Maybelle"Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers "Bustin' Loose"Willie Nelson "Don't Get Around Much Anymore"Howlin' Wolf "Dog Me Around"Emmylou Harris "Sweet Old World"Skeets McDonald "Heartbreaking Mama"Louis Armstrong "Star Dust"Ian Noe "Irene (Ravin' Bomb)"Billie Holiday "More Than You Know"Gillian Welch "Barroom Girls"Mississippi Fred McDowell "Mama Says I'm Crazy"Ten Years After "Good Morning Little School Girl"Steve Earle & The Dukes (& Duchesses) "Pocket Full of Rain"Tom Waits "Jersey Girl"Ruth Brown & Her Rhythmakers "The Tears Keep Tumbling Down"Lucero "Raining for Weeks"Alex Moore "Lillie Mae Boogie"The Yardbirds "Lost Woman"Joan Shelley "The Fading"Soltero "The Factory"The Spinners "Don't Let The Green Grass Fool You"

It was April 1927 when a pair of blues singers from Mississippi named Little Harvey Hull and Long Cleve Reed walked into a Chicago studio to record the first of a half dozen tunes they'd leave there over the next few weeks.Joining them for the session was guitarist Sunny Wilson, whose song "Hey! Lawdy Mama/France Blues" was among their first. The trio was billed on the label as “The Down Home Boys” when the disc was released the following month by Black Patti Records, a new short-lived company created by a fascinating historical character named J. Mayo “Ink” Williams.Ink WilliamsA Brown University graduate, Ink Williams is the only man we know of who was inducted into both the National Football Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame. Besides being one of the first African American pro-football players (as part of a Chicago team in the first season of the NFL), Williams also is remembered as an important recording industry pioneer.Starting his career producing for the fledgling Paramount Records, Williams earned his nickname because of his persuasive way of inking contracts with a wide range of original talent. Over the years, he was to work with Blind Lemon Jefferson and Ma Rainey, with Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, with Blind Blake and Ida Cox (not to mention Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Mahalia Jackson, Alberta Hunter, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Roosevelt Sykes, Sleepy John Estes and so many more). In 1924, Williams also earned an early entry in blues annals by producing the legendary Papa Charlie Jackson's “Lawdy, Lawdy Blues,” the first successful blues record made by an African American man.In 1927, Williams left Paramount to go out on his own by starting Black Patti Records, named after the opera singer Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones, who was called “Black Patti” because some thought she resembled the Italian opera singer Adelina Patti. While Williams' label lasted only seven months, it produced 55 records in a variety of styles, including blues, jazz and spirituals, as well as hell-fire sermons by “straining preachers” and comedy routines and popular ditties from vaudeville stars. When the enterprise was not immediately profitable, Williams moved on to greener pastures by the end of 1927, but not before discovering a few stand-out blues acts that had moved to Chicago from the South as part of “The Great Migration.”Among his finds in those early days was The Down Home Boys, whose two-guitar accompaniment was a blend of parlor guitar and ragtime. The trio sang blues, but much of its repertoire was from the turn of the century — before blues had become a dominant musical genre — and included ballads and medicine show material.Back to the SongSunny Wilson's “Hey! Mama” tune didn't have the same cachet of some of the group's other numbers — notably the guys' “Original Stack O'Lee Blues,” which probably was a response to Ma Rainey's version of the number, which had the young Louis Armstrong on cornet — but it did have a long shelf life. For instance, right after its Black Patti debut, it was brought out as "France Blues" on Gennett (credited to "Sunny Boy & His Pals") and again on Champion by "The Original Louisiana Entertainers.”Then 40 years later, the song was reborn in the folk revival of the 1960s. The Flood learned the song from the January 1964 album recorded by Stefan Grossman and Peter Siegel's Even Dozen Jug Band. This seminal ‘60s group also featured John Sebastian, Steve Katz, David Grisman and Maria Muldaur, all friends who got to know each other during legendary jam sessions in New York's Washington Square Park.Later that same year, the song made another notable folk revival appearance, this time performed by Mark Spoelstra (with Fritz Richmond on washtub bass and Doug Pomeroy on washboard and kazoo) on a landmark Elektra album called The Blues Project. Our Take on the TuneIf you hang out much with The Flood, it seems like everything we do is carefully planned …. uh, right… but actually, accident and happenstance are a couple of our good friends. Earlier this week, for example, we got together to plan for our show tonight at Sal's Speakeasy. As you'll hear in this track, between songs Charlie starts singing a bit of this old 1920s song. Immediately, Randy jumps in with some great harmony. Then Sam brightens it up with his harmonica and Danny puts a bow on the whole thing with a cookin' guitar part. And just like that the tune has inserted itself into the set list. All that's missing now is you. Come on down to Sal's Italian Eatery & Speakeasy tonight, 1624 Carter Avenue in beautiful downtown Ashland, Ky., and we'll getting you singing along on that hey-lawdy-mama-mama / hey-lawdy-papa-papa part! We play from 6 to 9. Come on out and party with us. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

A Cliff Lok double-bill and Lynda Bellingham's tits. One of these was requested by listener Rodney Dennis. Can you guess which one? Musical break: Drop That Sack by Papa Charlie Jackson Musical outro: What's That Tastes Like Gravy? by Tampa Red

Today's show features music performed by Clara Smith and Tampa Red

Vera Hall "Death, Have Mercy"Fleetwood Mac "Green Manalishi (With the Two Pronged Crown)"Bessie Smith "Graveyard Dream Blues"Billy Joe Shaver "The Devil Made Me Do It the First Time"Ted Leo and the Pharmacists "I'm A Ghost"Sister Rosetta Tharpe "Strange Things Happening Every Day"Tampa Red "Witchin' Hour Blues"Neil Young "Vampire Blues"Lefty Frizzell "The Long Black Veil"Muddy Waters "Got My Mojo Working"Dr. John "Black John the Conqueror"Leon Redbone "Haunted House"Little Willie John "I'm Shakin'"Shotgun Jazz Band "Old Man Mose"Lil Green "Romance In the Dark"The Make-Up "They Live By Night"Uncle Tupelo "Graveyard Shift"Bessie Jones "Oh Death"Albert King "Born Under a Bad Sign"Nina Simone "I Want a Little Sugar In My Bowl"Oscar Celestin "Marie Laveau"Reverend Gary Davis "Death Don't Have No Mercy"Roy Newman & His Boys "Sadie Green (The Vamp of New Orleans)"Jessie Mae Hemphill "She-Wolf"Screamin' Jay Hawkins "I Put a Spell On You"Eilen Jewell "It's Your Voodoo Working"George Olsen and His Music "Tain't No Sin to Dance Around in Your Bones"Son House "Death Letter"Johnny Cash "The Man Comes Around"Fleetwood Mac "Black Magic Woman"Blind Lemon Jefferson "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean"Elvis Costello & the Roots "Wise Up Ghost"Hank Williams "Howlin' At the Moon"Bob Dylan "That Old Black Magic"The Halo Benders "Scarin'"Blind Willie Johnson "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground"Steve And Justin Townes Earle "Candy Man"Billie Holiday "Sugar"Jeff Beck "I Ain't Superstitious"Cab Calloway/Cab Calloway Orchestra "St. James Infirmary"Bonnie Raitt "Devil Got My Woman"Sebadoh "Vampire"Fred McDowell "Death Came In"Howlin' Wolf "Evil"Ella Fitzgerald "Chew-Chew-Chew (Your Bubble Gum)"Robert Johnson "Hellhound On My Trail"John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers "The Super-Natural"Tom Waits "Big Joe and Phantom 309"

Una auténtica salvajada la que van a vivir esta calurosa noche con la La rubia explosiva del ritmo, el Profesor Longhair, Innocentay, Alberta Hunter, Tampa Red, Augie Goupil, The Boswell Sisters, Cootie Williams, Cortijo y su Combo, Jed Davenport, Hank Penny... A partir de las 23.00 horas en la sintonía de Radio 3.Una auténtica salvajada la que van a vivir esta calurosa noche con la La rubia explosiva del ritmo, el Profesor Longhair, Innocentay, Alberta Hunter, Tampa Red, Augie Goupil, The Boswell Sisters, Cootie Williams, Cortijo y su Combo, Jed Davenport, Hank Penny... A partir de las 23.00 horas en la sintonía de Radio 3. Escuchar audio

Hosts Nate Wilcox and Garrett Cash talk about the transformation of blues pianist Georgia Tom into the most important composer of modern African-American gospel music.Buy the book and support the podcast.Download this episode. Check out this playlist of his work on Spotify.Have a question or a suggestion for a topic or person for Nate to interview? Email letitrollpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on Twitter.Follow us on Facebook.Let It Roll is proud to be part of Pantheon Podcasts.

King Of The World (Money Talks); Louisiana Red and Bob Corritore (Caught Your Man And Gone); Elvin Bishop (I Found Out); Mike Zito (Back Problems); Tampa Red (1950 Blues); Little Sam Davis (1958 Blues); Debra Power (I'm Not From Chicago); John Mayall (Can't Take No More); Greg Nagy (Can't Take It No More); Niecie (Lighter Shade Of Blue); Blind Willie McTell (Cooling Board Blues); Slideboy Vegas (Death Letter); Doug MacLeod (Too Many Misses For Me); Paul Oscher (B And O Blues); Last Chance Saloon (Blues With A Vengeance).

In another very special episode recorded in Jamaica, Rob sits down with the one and only Melvin Seals. Melvin shares his experiences working with Jerry Garcia and offers some great insight into their relationship both on and off the stage and the importance of keeping the Garcia band repertoire alive through JGB. We go way back and hear how Melvin first got into music through the church and he explains the adjustments he had to make coming from that background into the world of improvisation, plus much more.Also on the show is Mark Hitchcock of the Buffalo Dead All Stars and we feature Tampa Red in the Black Music Moment.Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net)Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays)https://paypal.me/themusicplaysGrateful SweatsSubtle and Unique Dead Inspired GearSarno Music SolutionsProducing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, MissouriBlue Jade Audio MasteringSt louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999The Authenticity AcademyGet in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching.CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needshttps://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/Part of Pantheon Podcasts

In another very special episode recorded in Jamaica, Rob sits down with the one and only Melvin Seals. Melvin shares his experiences working with Jerry Garcia and offers some great insight into their relationship both on and off the stage and the importance of keeping the Garcia band repertoire alive through JGB. We go way back and hear how Melvin first got into music through the church and he explains the adjustments he had to make coming from that background into the world of improvisation, plus much more. Also on the show is Mark Hitchcock of the Buffalo Dead All Stars and we feature Tampa Red in the Black Music Moment. Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net) Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays) https://paypal.me/themusicplays Grateful Sweats Subtle and Unique Dead Inspired Gear Sarno Music Solutions Producing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, Missouri Blue Jade Audio Mastering St louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999 The Authenticity Academy Get in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching. CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needs https://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/ Part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In another very special episode recorded in Jamaica, Rob sits down with the one and only Melvin Seals. Melvin shares his experiences working with Jerry Garcia and offers some great insight into their relationship both on and off the stage and the importance of keeping the Garcia band repertoire alive through JGB. We go way back and hear how Melvin first got into music through the church and he explains the adjustments he had to make coming from that background into the world of improvisation, plus much more.Also on the show is Mark Hitchcock of the Buffalo Dead All Stars and we feature Tampa Red in the Black Music Moment.Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net)Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays)https://paypal.me/themusicplaysGrateful SweatsSubtle and Unique Dead Inspired GearSarno Music SolutionsProducing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, MissouriBlue Jade Audio MasteringSt louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999The Authenticity AcademyGet in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching.CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needshttps://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/Part of Pantheon Podcasts

In another very special episode recorded in Jamaica, Rob sits down with the one and only Melvin Seals. Melvin shares his experiences working with Jerry Garcia and offers some great insight into their relationship both on and off the stage and the importance of keeping the Garcia band repertoire alive through JGB. We go way back and hear how Melvin first got into music through the church and he explains the adjustments he had to make coming from that background into the world of improvisation, plus much more. Also on the show is Mark Hitchcock of the Buffalo Dead All Stars and we feature Tampa Red in the Black Music Moment. Support the show (https://www.themusicplaystheband.net) Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/themusicplays) https://paypal.me/themusicplays Grateful Sweats Subtle and Unique Dead Inspired Gear Sarno Music Solutions Producing the finest musical instrument audio gear, designed and hand-built in St. Louis, Missouri Blue Jade Audio Mastering St louis's primary audio mastering service since 1999 The Authenticity Academy Get in touch with your authentic self. Offering you online courses and private coaching. CLEAN Store Software driven solutions and concierge service for all of your branding and apparel needs https://www.cleanuniform.com/branding-apparel-store/ Part of Pantheon Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

 | Artist  | Title  | Album Name  | Album Copyright | Kay Kyser & His Orchestra  | What Are You Doing New Year's  | Big Band Swing Christmas | Grant Dermody And Frank Fotusky  | Shake It Don't Break It  | Diggin In John's Backyard | Corey Harris  | Scottsville Breakdown.mp3  | Insurrection Blues  |  | Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton  | Reuben's Train  | Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton  | Smithsonian Folkways | Little G Weevil  | Going Back South  | Live Acoustic Session | Doc Watson  | Rising Sun Blues  | Vibraphonic Acoustic March 2005 | Tampa Red  | Christmas And New Year Blues  | Papa Ain't No Santa Claus, Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree | Red Murrell  | Ernest Tubb's Talking Blues  | Dylan's Talking Blues - The Roots of Bob's Rythmic Rhyming | Packie Dolan & His Boys  | Irish Girl-Blue Breeches  | The Return Of The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of | The Qualities  | Happy New Year To You  | Papa Ain't No Santa Claus, Mama Ain't No Christmas Tree | Wink Burcham  | Son of a Travelin' Man  | Cowboy Heroes and Old Folk Songs | Blind Blake  | Early Morning Blues  | All The Recorded Sides | Malcolm Holcombe  | Tricks of the Trade  | Tricks of the Trade (Release Date - August 20 2021) | Gus Cannon  | Poor Boy, Long Way From Home (1927)  | Broadcasting the Blues, volume 1 | Elly Wininger  | January 6th  |   |  | Abrew's Portuguese Instrumental Trio  | Cabo Verdranos Peça Nove [Cape Verdranos Nine Piece]  | Folks, He Sure Do Pull Some Bow!: Vintage Fiddle Music 1927-193

Grace Chang (Ge Lan, 葛蘭/葛兰), (born 1933) was a breakthrough star in one of several  Golden Ages of Hong Cinema, this one around around 1960. For a comparatively short time between the mid fifties and sixties, Chang was one of the most popular screen stars in the Chinese-speaking world outside of the People's Republic. She encapsulated a new female ideal for aspirational audiences on the Western side of the divide in Cold War East Asia: a woman who was young, mobile, pleasure-seeking, and most importantly empowered to play the main role in her own life's dramas. Her films, comic and dramatic alike, explored themes such as youth culture, urbanization, family breakdown, and sexual emancipation. And man could she sing.This episode's first postcard explores Chang's 1960 film Wild, Wild Rose (野玫瑰之戀/野玫瑰之恋) directed by Wong Tin-Lam with music by Ryōichi Hattori. We open in an upscale Hong Kong nightclub. Chang, the tragic heroine, is singing a Latin jazz version of the Habanera from Bizet's Carmen. Yet the fact that she's singing Bizet – this is a retelling of the Carmen story after all – is not even the most unexpected thing about the performance: what's even more interesting is how she sings it. In this version, Chang gets through a wide range through what Chris calls “a spontaneous combustion of dance music,” in a jazz idiom that “refracts” styles from Latin (one of her previous films was Mambo Girl, 1957) to boogie-woogie, all delivered in a one-off vocal growl that actually echoes sounds from Chinese spoken theater.You'll have to listen to the episode to hear more of our take on what this brilliant mixture means, but as Tom says, the scene has a “double bottom.” If you look–and listen–underneath its surface, you find layers of context that echo 1920s Japan, wartime Shanghai under Japanese occupation, and 1950s Hong Kong, that last a distant outpost of the collapsing British Empire, now beginning a rapid transformation from poverty towards, outwardly at least, shiny capitalist prosperity.We finish the first part of the episode by dwelling on Chang's guitar, a chrome-plated resonator that looks an awful lot like the kind that Hawaiian players like Sol Hoopii and bluesmen like Tampa Red had made famous three decades earlier. They are in fact very similar: as objects of music technology, these unique guitars tie Chang and the “American” players together like nodes in a network.Unlike Chang, who faded into unjustifiable obscurity after she retired suddenly in 1964, Robert Johnson (1911-1938) lived on after his untimely death as a central figure in the collective mythography of the Delta Blues. But memories can deceive. Our argument in the second half of the episode is that Johnson's reputation as a brilliant, naive genius (a “memory” backed up by Son House's suggestions that he somehow sold his soul to the Devil in return for musical secrets, as implied in Walter Hill's problematic 1987 film Crossroads) flies in the face of what actually happened. If you peel back the layers of the mythographic onion, in place of a tortured and doomed musical superman, we find a brilliant and intentional musical synthesist with a special genius at making new technologies resonate together. Visual evidence is key to what we are claiming. It's easy, Chris explains, to read the famous cover painting of the iconic Columbia Records two-LP gatefold album (see website), which depicts Johnson playing and singing directly into the corner of a San Antonio hotel room, as evidence of man so self-consciously shy, so removed from functional social skills, that he literally could only play to the wall. But what Johnson was really doing was sculpting sound, using the corner of the room to “corner load” the acoustics of the recording, intentionally and artfully compressing his acoustic Gibson L1's sound and boosting its signal as Jimi Hendrix would later do via effects pedals with his electric Stratocasters. In pulling everything he could out of new microphone technology and the unique acoustical demands of his art form, Johnson, in other words, was a conscious, expert, and intentional artist: a master engineer of the Delta Blues.Key PointsDespite the proliferation of oversimplified expectations, presumptions, and definitions, jazz is not a fixed thing. Like any musical style, jazz–in its sounds, practices, and expressive goals– is what people who make it say it is. The spread of “jazz”  to East Asia before and after World War II is a usefully complicated example.The 1960 Hong Kong film Wild, Wild, Rose, starring the breakout star Grace Chang, demonstrates how jazz sounds and associations traveled, and how listening in new ways can deepen understanding of global processes of commerce, politics, and technology.Objects such as musical instruments–in our example Chang's resonator guitar, which looks an awful lot like those made famous by 1930s Hawaiian and blues players, are like nodes in a network. Although they are “only” objects, those objects–and their meaning to users–can help us make new links and tell new stories.The story of Robert Johnson shows how tempting it is for popular histories to turn into mythical figures. In Johnson's case his reputation as a tortured, untamed genius has obscured his role as a brilliant and intentional technological and stylistic innovator.ResourcesMichael Denning's Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Revolution has really shaped our thinking about how technology can drive musical change across global networks.For a further account of Grace Chang's brief and remarkable career we highly recommend the chapters on her in Jean Ma, Sounding the Modern Woman: The Songstress in Chinese Cinema.Ryōichi Hattori's career as a pioneer of jazz in Japan is covered in Tyler Atkins, Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan.The Wild, Wild, Rose is not currently available to stream, but clips from several of its scenes can be found on YouTube.Perry Henzel's The Harder they Come is available on many streaming services.Walter Hill's 1987 film Crossroads, which perpetuates myths about Robert Johnson, is available to stream. You can also listen to Ry Cooder's excellent soundtrack wherever you get your music.Our thanks go to roots music master Ry Cooder for the initial insight about Robert's corner-loading! "Ry Cooder: Talking Country Blues," by Jas Obrecht, Guitar Player magazine, July 1990.All of the books mentioned in the episode can be found in our Sounding History Goodreads discussion group. Join the conversation!

First broadcast on September 20, 1977. Blind John Davis, Chicago blues pianist, discusses his time playing in Germany and at the Blue Note jazz club, chitlin' parties, growing up on the West side of Chicago. He also recalls meeting and working with musicians like Tampa Red and Big Bill Broonzy. Music by John Davis (unless noted as another artist) is played throughout : "Jim Town Blues", "Every Day I Got the Blues", "Pine Top's Boogie Woogie", "Summertime", "Looking Up at Down"- Big Bill Broonzy, "Killer Diller Blues"- Memphis Minnie, "Moanin' the Blues", "When I Lost My Baby", and "Magic Carpet". Music has been removed from this recording for copyright reasons.

 In blues parlance, the term “easy rider” is code for …oh, well, many things. Maybe a rovin' gambler or a lover, maybe a pimp… Y'all just talk among yourselves and let your imagination gallop away with that one. The easy rider starts appearing in blues songs more than a century ago. W.C. Handy featured an easy rider in his great “Yellow Dog Blues” back in 1912, but of course, that text was covered in an earlier sermon from this pulpit. Well, a decade or so after Handy, another of our heroes, Hudson Whitaker — better known to the denizens of night music as Tampa Red — brought out a new version of the story and it's that tune that's been rattling around our heads lately. Well, last night our old buddy, hamonicat Jim Rumbaugh dropped by to sit in and we just had to introduce him to the tune. Here's the result, with tasty solos and fills by Jim, Randy Hamilton on bass and, of course, on the tenor the soulful Miss Veezy Coffman.

Prodigioso desfile de titanes del ritmo al que vamos a asistir esta noche en Melodías Pizarras en su edición casera. Entre otras leyendas del macrosurco: Gene Krupa, Big Joe Turner, Nelo Sosa, Cab Calloway, Tampa Red, King Radio, Sonny Boy Williamson II... A partir de las 23.00 horas en la sintonía de Radio 3. Escuchar audio

Ever thought F*ck It, I Quit?  I do, all the time.  This week my thoughts of quitting lead me down the path of, HELL NO, I'm no Quitter, but I am.   Quitting it isn't all bad and sometimes you need to know when to quit, but following through leads to more...  Music that is! Playlist: The Meters - People Say (Rejuvenation) https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/musicdb/  Hobo Johnson - 3% (The Rise Of Hobo Johnson) https://store.hobojohnson.com/music.html Del the Funkee Homosapian - Mistadobalina (Mistadobalina EP) https://www.instagram.com/delhiero/?hl=en SNOG - Fanfare For The Common ManWoman (Third Mall From The Sun) https://www.metropolis-records.com/artist/snog  Ernest Tubb - Driving Nails In My Coffin (Hits Of The Texas Troubadour) https://countrymusichalloffame.org/artist/ernest-tubb/  Suzi Quatro - Little Bitch Blue (Daytona Demon) http://www.suziquatro.com/ Mary Ford & Les Paul - I'm Sitting On Top Of The World (Best Of Capitol) https://www.les-paul.com/timeline/les-mary/ WIRE - Ex Lion Tamer (Pink Flag) http://www.pinkflag.com/ Gil Scott-Heron - Home Is Where The Hatred Is (Ghetto Style) https://gilscottheron.net/ Lali Puna - Middle Curse (Scary World Theory) http://www.lalipuna.de/ Beach Boys - Cassius Love VS Sunny Wilson https://www.thebeachboys.com/ The O'Jays -992 Arguements (The Essential O'Jays) http://www.mightyojays.com/ Dead Kennedy's - Take This Job And Shove It (Bedtime For Democracy) http://www.deadkennedys.com/ David Seville - Alvin For President https://alvin.fandom.com/wiki/Dave_Seville Porter Wagoner - Skid Row Joe (The Cold Hard Facts) https://countrymusichalloffame.org/artist/porter-wagoner/ Foxygen - Why Did I Get Married (Take The Kids Off Broadway) https://www.foxygentheband.com/ Bourvil - CeTait Bien http://www.frenchfilms.org/biography/bourvil.html Tampa Red - Singing & Crying Blues https://musicianguide.com/biographies/1608002363/Tampa-Red.html Don't Quit - Edgar Albert-Guest (Poem) Tim Curry - Biting My Nails https://www.timcurry.co.uk/ No Age - Cappo (Nouns) https://noage.bandcamp.com/ Negativland - Christianity Is Stupid (Escape From Noise) https://negativland.com/ Kurt Vile - Overnight Religion (Childish Prodigy) https://kurtvile.com/ Men Without Hats - Hey Men (The Adventures Of Men & Women Without Hats) http://safetydance.com/ Sue Thompson - Paper Tiger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sue_Thompson    

WPA Rag . .Big Bill Broonzy and Tampa Red in the 1930's with the Chicago Five and others . . This style is often called the "Bluebird Blues" because of the sound being associated with hundreds of records on Bluebird in the 1930's and early 40's. Broonzy and Tampa Red were seasoned recording stars from the 1920's on and here adapt nicely to swing, with great contributions from Punch Miller, Bill Owsley and Buster Bennett. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

Making a Scene Presents an Interview with Damon FowlerFlorida's Gulf Coast has produced a plethora of distinctive musicians, from the blues of Tampa Red to jazz greats Cannonball and Nat Adderley to former Allman Brothers guitarist Dickey Betts to The Outlaws. Tampa's Damon Fowler, a masterful singer, guitar player, and songwriter has absorbed the best of and furthered the region's definitive artists' work. A hard-driving troubadour, his music is steeped with soul and representative of the many styles that make up American music's roots. He has gained his peers' respect given his featured slot in Butch Truck's Freight Train band and his side gig as guitarist in the Dickey Betts Band. Critics have compared Fowler's guitar work to Johnny Winter and Jeff Beck, while his slide guitar is reminiscent of the late Duane Allman. Fowler can play fiery guitar runs with the best of them, and his lyrical work on lap steel and dobro makes him a stand out performer among the legions of guitar heroes. His new release, Alafia Moon, combines all the influences that have shaped his distinctive blues career. Damon Fowler,Kicked His Ass Out,Alafia MoonDamon Fowler,Hip To Your Trip,Alafia Moonmakingascene,Damon Fowler,Damon Fowler,The Umbrella,Alafia MoonDamon Fowler,Make The Best Of Your Time,Alafia Moon 

 While we are regularly reminded that they nailed Socrates for corrupting the youth, we do sometimes feel obliged to enlighten the younger members of our audience as to the origins of some of the bluer material in our repertoire. This song, for example — which we got from a 1934 recording by a couple of our heroes, Tampa Red and Georgia Tom — isn’t about what you might think it’s about. Don’t worry! The “dead cat” in the title isn’t Mittens or Fluffy. It’s about fishing. No, really. The Flood’s crack research department looked into this, oh, 10 or 12 years ago and learned — from no less an authority than the late, great word guru William Safire, writing in The New York Times — that the phase "dead cat on the line" appears to refer to a dead catfish on a trotline, evidence that a lazy fisherman hasn’t been checking his poles. In other words, the song’s just saying, look out, now — something's fishy...

Today’s show features music performed by Tampa Red

Today’s show features music performed by Tampa Red and Sarasota Slim

Show 109 – Recorded 12-19-20 This Christmas Season podcast features 17 outstanding blues artists and 17 great performances to enjoy. These songs were recorded from the late 1929 – 1958. Our featured artists are: Ralph Willis, Jimmy Butler, Bumble Bee Slim, Tampa Red, Harmon Ray, Bo Carter, Sonny Boy Williamson 1, LeRoy Carr, Sons of Heaven, Sonny Boy Williamson 2, Willie McNeal, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lowell Fulson, The Nic Nacs and Mickey Champion, Chuck Berry, Guitar Slim and Jelly Belly, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Show 109 – Recorded 12-19-20 This Christmas Season podcast features 17 outstanding blues artists and 17 great performances to enjoy. These songs were recorded from the late 1929 – 1958. Our featured artists are: Ralph Willis, Jimmy Butler, Bumble Bee Slim, Tampa Red, Harmon Ray, Bo Carter, Sonny Boy Williamson 1, LeRoy Carr, Sons of Heaven, Sonny Boy Williamson 2, Willie McNeal, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Lowell Fulson, The Nic Nacs and Mickey Champion, Chuck Berry, Guitar Slim and Jelly Belly, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Bridget presents some fascinating events from the history of rock, roots and blues that occurred in the month of November. It features in order of appearance tracks by Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino, Johnnie Ray, John Lennon, The Who, Rolling Stones, The Band, Milli Vanilli, Link Ray, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold, Mississippi John Hurt, Big Joe Turner, Sharon Jones, Billie Forrester, Carl Perkins, Tampa Red, Bill Haley, Johnny Horton, Eva Cassidy , Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, Carey Bell, Joe Hill Louis, Sylvester Weaver, Howlin’ Wolf, Nick Drake, Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream. Size: 93.5 MB (98,099,828 bytes) Duration: 40:50

For a mere five years, the rollicking, hard-driving piano playing of Major "Big Maceo" Merriweather dominated the Chicago blues scene. Maceo was left handed, and no one before or since has been able to create the drive and beat that propelled the recordings he made with Tampa Red, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson I, and under his own name. Sadly, a stroke in 1946 deprived him of the use of his right hand. Support the show (https://paypal.me/BFrank53?locale.x=en_US)

When The Flood first started doing this song some 40 years ago and Charlie’s sweet mother asked where such an odd little tune came from, we didn’t want to tell her the truth, so he said, “Mom, it was a popular party song in the late 1920s.” Well, it wasn’t a complete lie; it’s just the “parties” where this song was born started very late at night and were in a part of town where nice girls generally didn’t go. The song we’ve always called “Yas Yas Duck” is an old hokum jazz tune that’s been recorded under a lot different names over the years. As near as we can figure, the first recording was by the great St. Louis piano pounder James “Stump” Johnson who released it in January 1929 as “The Duck Yas-Yas-Yas.” Later that some year, new versions started cropping up, one recorded by Oliver Cobb and his Rhythm Kings and another by all-time Flood heroes Tampa Red and Georgia Tom. For us, the tune has become a kind of connective tissue between today and our old jug band roots of the 1970s and ’80s. That’s why we put it on our first commercial CD back in 2001, and why it still gets trotted out regularly at rehearsals, just so newer members of the band can learn it. This track, from a rehearsal back in early March, was bassist Paul Callicoat’s introduction to The Duck. At the beginning of the track, you’ll hear us telling him where to find the chords in his new Flood Fakebook.

The 2020 NFL Draft would have been an intriguing one even without a global pandemic going on! So, what storylines and scenarios are the guys following most? Is it the logistics and technical side of it all? How will it look on TV... Will there be drama with picks and trades getting in? Or is it the players and more importantly the Quarterbacks!? Which QB is taken after Burrow? Is chase Young a lock at #2? Will Detroit trade out of the #3 spot? Who moves up? The guys discuss it all. Oh, and don't forget about Rob Gronkowski unretiring and being traded to Tampa!!! Plus, did the Red Sox get off to easy for their sign stealing role? Don't miss this episode of the Sports Reporters!

ft. Woo, Look Twice, Comfort & Joy, David Walker, The J-P-C Gang, The Whispers, X Ray Pop, The Qualities/Sun Ra, Mikado, Reigning Sound, Akis, Nemo Vachez, Deniece Williams, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Joseph Washington Jr., Clyde Lasley & the Cadillac Baby Specials, Magic Carpet, Jeles Napok, C. Joiner, Tampa Red, Rick Dees, Ditto, Durutti Column

A very special Thanksgiving episode! Jack talks record collecting, hunting down rare old 78s and plays the music of: Freddie “Schnickelfritz” Fisher and his Orchestra, Tampa Red, Hoosier Hot Shots, Johnny Marvin, Bing Crosby, Elton Britt, Theron Hale and Daughters, “Fats” Waller and his Rhythm, Connie Boswell with Woody Herman and his Orchestra, Darrel Fischer and his “Log-Jammers”. Visit: www.JackAndKitty.com for more info. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jackspinsshellac/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jackspinsshellac/support

Jack talks record collecting, hunting down rare old 78s and discusses the music of: Frank Luther and Carson Robison, Rhythm Wreckers with Whitey McPherson, Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band with Frankie Half Pint Jaxon, The Kidoodlers, Freddie “Schnickelfritz” Fisher and his Orchestra, Emmett Miller and his Georgia Crackers, New Orleans Willie Jackson, Johnny Marvin, Esmereldy, Rusty Howard and the Rhythm Rangers. Visit: www.JackSpinsShellac.com for more info. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/jackspinsshellac/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jackspinsshellac/support

Episode fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Keep A Knockin'" by Little Richard, the long history of the song, and the tension between its performer's faith and sexuality. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "At the Hop" by Danny and the Juniors.   ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of the information used here comes from The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography by Charles White, which is to all intents and purposes Richard's autobiography, as much of the text is in his own words. A warning for those who might be considering buying this though -- it contains descriptions of his abuse as a child, and is also full of internalised homo- bi- and trans-phobia. This collection contains everything Richard released before 1962, from his early blues singles through to his gospel albums from after he temporarily gave up rock and roll for the church. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum In the podcast I refer to a jazz band as "the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group". Their name is actually "the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band".   Transcript When last we looked at Little Richard properly, he had just had a hit with "Long Tall Sally", and was at the peak of his career. Since then, we've seen that he had become big enough that he was chosen over Fats Domino to record the theme tune to "The Girl Can't Help It", and that he was the inspiration for James Brown. But today we're going to look in more detail at Little Richard's career in the mid fifties, and at how he threw away that career for his beliefs. [Excerpt: Little Richard with his Band, "Keep A Knockin'"] Richard's immediate follow-up to "Long Tall Sally" was another of his most successful records, a double-sided hit with both songs credited to John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell -- "Rip it Up" backed with "Ready Teddy". These both went to number one on the R&B charts, but they possibly didn't have quite the same power as RIchard's first two singles. Where the earlier singles had been truly unique artefacts, songs that didn't sound like anything else out there, "Rip it Up" and "Ready Teddy" were both much closer to the typical songs of the time -- the lyrics were about going out and having a party and rocking and rolling, rather than about sex with men or cross-dressing sex workers. But this didn't make Richard any less successful, and throughout 1956 and 57 he kept releasing more hits, often releasing singles where both the A and B side became classics -- we've discussed "The Girl Can't Help It" and "She's Got It" in the episode on "Twenty Flight Rock", but there was also "Jenny Jenny", "Send Me Some Lovin'", and possibly the greatest of them all, "Lucille": [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Lucille"] But Richard was getting annoyed at the routine of recording -- or more precisely, he was getting annoyed at the musicians he was having to work with in the studio. He was convinced that his own backing band, the Upsetters, were at least as good as the studio musicians, and he was pushing for Specialty to let him use them in the studio. And when they finally let him use the Upsetters in the studio, he recorded a song which had roots which go much further back than you might imagine. "Keep A Knockin'" had a long, long, history. It derives originally from a piece called "A Bunch of Blues", written by J. Paul Wyer and Alf Kelly in 1915. Wyer was a violin player with W.C. Handy's band, and Handy recorded the tune in 1917: [Excerpt: W.C. Handy's Memphis Blues Band, "A Bunch of Blues"] That itself, though, may derive from another song, "My Bucket's Got A Hole in It", which is an old jazz standard. There are claims that it was originally played by the great jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden around the turn of the twentieth century. No recordings survive of Bolden playing the song, but a group called "the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group" have put together what, other than the use of modern recording, seems a reasonable facsimile of how Bolden would have played the song: [Excerpt: "My Bucket's Got a Hole in it", the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band] If Bolden did play that, then the melody dates back to around 1906 at the latest, as from 1907 on Bolden was in a psychiatric hospital with schizophrenia, but the 1915 date for "A Bunch of Blues" is the earliest definite date we have for the melody. "My Bucket's Got a Hole in it" would later be recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. It was particularly popular among country singers: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, "My Bucket's Got A Hole In It"] But the song took another turn in 1928, when it was recorded by Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band. This group featured Tampa Red, who would later go on to be a blues legend in his own right, and "Georgia Tom", who as Thomas Dorsey would later be best known as the writer of much of the core repertoire of gospel music. You might remember us talking about Dorsey in the episode on Rosetta Tharpe. He's someone who wrote dirty, funny, blues songs until he had a religious experience while on stage, and instead became a writer of religious music, writing songs like "Precious Lord, Take My Hand" and "Peace in the Valley". But in 1928, he was still Georgia Tom and still recording hokum songs. We talked about hokum music right back in the earliest episodes of the podcast, but as a reminder, hokum music is a form which is now usually lumped into the blues by most of the few people who come across it, but which actually comes from vaudeville and especially from minstrel shows, and was hugely popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. It usually involved simple songs with a verse/chorus structure, and with lyrics that were an extended comedy metaphor, usually some form of innuendo about sex, with titles like "Meat Balls" and "Banana in Your Fruit Basket". As you can imagine, this kind of music is one that influenced a lot of people who went on to influence Little Richard, and it's in this crossover genre which had elements of country, blues, and pop that we find "My Bucket's Got a Hole in it" turning into the song that would later be known as "Keep A Knockin'". Tampa Red's version was titled "You Can't Come In", and seems to have been the origin not only of "Keep A Knockin'" but also of the Lead Belly song "Midnight Special" -- you can hear the similarity in the guitar melody: [Excerpt: Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band, "You Can't Come In"] The version by Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band wasn't the first recording to combine the "Keep a Knockin'" lyrics with the "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" melody -- the piano player Bert Mays recorded a version a month earlier, and Mays and his producer Mayo Williams, one of the first black record producers, are usually credited as the songwriters as a result (with Little Richard also being credited on his version). Mays was in turn probably inspired by an earlier recording by James "Boodle It" Wiggins, but Wiggins had a different melody -- Mays seems to be the one who first combined the lyrics with the "My Bucket's Got a Hole In It" melody on a recording. But the idea was probably one that had been knocking around for a while in various forms, given the number of different variations of the melody that turn up, and Tampa Red's version inspired all the future recordings. As hokum music lies at the roots of both blues and country, it's not surprising that "You Can't Come in" was picked up by both country and blues musicians. A version of the song, for example, was recorded by, among others, Milton Brown -- who had been an early musical partner of Bob Wills and one of the people who helped create Western Swing. [Excerpt: Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies: "Keep A Knockin'"] But the version that Little Richard recorded was most likely inspired by Louis Jordan's version. Jordan was, of course, Richard's single biggest musical inspiration, so we can reasonably assume that the record by Jordan was the one that pushed him to record the song. [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Keep A Knockin'"] The Jordan record was probably brought to mind in 1955 when Smiley Lewis had a hit with Dave Bartholomew's take on the idea. "I Hear You Knockin'" only bears a slight melodic resemblance to "Keep A Knockin'", but the lyrics are so obviously inspired by the earlier song that it would have brought it to mind for anyone who had heard any of the earlier versions: [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, "I Hear You Knockin'"] That was also recorded by Fats Domino, one of Little Richard's favourite musicians, so we can be sure that Richard had heard it. So by the time Little Richard came to record "Keep A Knockin'" in very early 1957, he had a host of different versions he could draw on for inspiration. But what we ended up with is something that's uniquely Little Richard -- something that was altogether wilder: [Excerpt: Little Richard and his band, "Keep A Knockin'"] In some takes of the song, Richard also sang a verse about drinking gin, which was based on Louis Jordan's version which had a similar verse: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Keep A Knockin'", "drinking gin" verse from take three] But in the end, what they ended up with was only about fifty-seven seconds worth of usable recording. Listening to the session recording, it seems that Grady Gaines kept trying different things with his saxophone solo, and not all of them quite worked as well as might be hoped -- there are a few infelicities in most of his solos, though not anything that you wouldn't expect from a good player trying new things. To get it to a usable length, they copied and pasted the whole song from the start of Richard's vocal through to the end of the saxophone solo, and almost doubled the length of the song -- the third and fourth verses, and the second saxophone solo, are the same recording as the first and second verses and the first sax solo. If you want to try this yourself, it seems that the "whoo" after the first "keep a knockin' but you can't come in" after the second sax solo is the point where the copy/pasting ends. But even though the recording ended up being a bit of a Frankenstein's monster, it remains one of Little Richard's greatest tracks. At the same session, he also recorded another of his very best records, "Ooh! My Soul!": [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Ooh! My Soul!"] That session also produced a single for Richard's chauffeur, with Richard on the piano, released under the name "Pretty Boy": [Excerpt: Pretty Boy, "Bip Bop Bip"] "Pretty Boy" would later go on to be better known as Don Covay, and would have great success as a soul singer and songwriter. He's now probably best known for writing "Chain of Fools" for Aretha Franklin. That session was a productive one, but other than one final session in October 1957, in which he knocked out a couple of blues songs as album fillers, it would be Little Richard's last rock and roll recording session for several years. Richard had always been deeply conflicted about... well, about everything, really. He was attracted to men as well as women, he loved rock and roll and rhythm and blues music, loved eating chitlins and pork chops, drinking, and taking drugs, and was unsure about his own gender identity. He was also deeply, deeply, religious, and a believer in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which believed that same-sex attraction, trans identities, and secular music were the work of the Devil, and that one should keep a vegetarian and kosher diet, and avoid all drugs, even caffeine. This came to a head in October 1957. Richard was on a tour of Australia with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Alis Lesley, who was another of the many singers billed as "the female Elvis Presley": [Excerpt: Alis Lesley, "He Will Come Back To Me"] Vincent actually had to miss the first couple of shows on the tour, as he and the Blue Caps got held up in Honolulu, apparently due to visa issues, and couldn't continue on to Australia with the rest of the tour until that was sorted out. They were replaced on those early shows by a local group, Johnny O'Keefe and the Dee Jays, who performed some of Vincent's songs as well as their own material, and who managed to win the audiences round even though they were irritated at Vincent's absence. O'Keefe isn't someone we're going to be able to discuss in much detail in this series, because he had very little impact outside of Australia. But within Australia, he's something of a legend as their first home-grown rock and roll star. And he did make one record which people outside of Australia have heard of -- his biggest hit, from 1958, "Wild One", which has since been covered by, amongst others, Jerry Lee Lewis and Iggy Pop: [Excerpt: Johnny O'Keefe, "Wild One"] The flight to Australia was longer and more difficult than any Richard had experienced before, and at one point he looked out of the window and saw the engines glowing red. He became convinced that the plane was on fire, and being held up by angels. He became even more worried a couple of days later when Russia launched their first satellite, Sputnik, and it passed low over Australia -- low enough that he claimed he could see it, like a fireball in the sky, while he was performing. He decided this was a sign, and that he was being told by God that he needed to give up his life of sin and devote himself to religion. He told the other people on the tour this, but they didn't believe him -- until he threw all his rings into the ocean to prove it. He insisted on cancelling his appearances with ten days of the tour left to go and travelling back to the US with his band. He has often also claimed that the plane they were originally scheduled to fly back on crashed in the Pacific on the flight he would have been on -- I've seen no evidence anywhere else of this, and I have looked. When he got back, he cut one final session for Specialty, and then went into a seminary to start studying for the ministry. While his religious belief is genuine, there has been some suggestion that this move wasn't solely motivated by his conversion. Rather, John Marascalco has often claimed that Richard's real reason for his conversion was based on more worldly considerations. Richard's contract with Specialty was only paying him half a cent per record sold, which he considered far too low, and the wording of the contract only let him end it on either his own death or an act of god. He was trying -- according to Marascalco -- to claim that his religious awakening was an act of God, and so he should be allowed to break his contract and sign with another label. Whatever the truth, Specialty had enough of a backlog of Little Richard recordings that they could keep issuing them for the next couple of years. Some of those, like "Good Golly Miss Molly" were as good as anything he had ever recorded. and rightly became big hits: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Good Golly Miss Molly"] Many others, though, were substandard recordings that they originally had no plans to release -- but with Richard effectively on strike and the demand for his recordings undiminished, they put out whatever they had. Richard went out on the road as an evangelist, but also went to study to become a priest. He changed his whole lifestyle -- he married a woman, although they would later divorce as, among other things, they weren't sexually compatible. He stopped drinking and taking drugs, stopped even drinking coffee, and started eating only vegetables cooked in vegetable oil. After the lawsuits over him quitting Specialty records were finally settled, he started recording again, but only gospel songs: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"] And that was how things stood for several years. The tension between Richard's sexuality and his religion continued to torment him -- he dropped out of the seminary after propositioning another male student, and he was arrested in a public toilet -- but he continued his evangelism and gospel singing until October 1962, when he went on tour in the UK. Just like the previous tour which had been a turning point in his life, this one featured Gene Vincent, but was also affected by Vincent's work permit problems. This time, Vincent was allowed in the country but wasn't allowed to perform on stage -- so he appeared only as the compere, at least at the start of the tour -- later on, he would sing "Be Bop A Lula" from offstage as well. Vincent wasn't the only one to have problems, either. Sam Cooke, who was the second-billed star for the show, was delayed and couldn't make the first show, which was a bit of a disaster. Richard was accompanied by a young gospel organ player named Billy Preston, and he'd agreed to the tour under the impression that he was going to be performing only his gospel music. Don Arden, the promoter, had been promoting it as Richard's first rock and roll tour in five years, and the audience were very far from impressed when Richard came on stage in flowing white robes and started singing "Peace in the Valley" and other gospel songs. Arden was apoplectic. If Richard didn't start performing rock and roll songs soon, he would have to cancel the whole tour -- an audience that wanted "Rip it Up" and "Long Tall Sally" and "Tutti Frutti" wasn't going to put up with being preached at. Arden didn't know what to do, and when Sam Cooke and his manager J.W. Alexander turned up to the second show, Arden had a talk with Alexander about it. Alexander told Arden he had nothing to worry about -- he knew Little Richard of old, and knew that Richard couldn't stand to be upstaged. He also knew how good Sam Cooke was. Cooke was at the height of his success at this point, and he was an astonishing live performer, and so when he went out on stage and closed the first half, including an incendiary performance of "Twistin' the Night Away" that left the audience applauding through the intermission, Richard knew he had to up his game. While he'd not been performing rock and roll in public, he had been tempted back into the studio to record in his old style at least once before, when he'd joined his old group to record Fats Domino's "I'm In Love Again", for a single that didn't get released until December 1962. The single was released as by "the World Famous Upsetters", but the vocalist on the record was very recognisable: [Excerpt: The World Famous Upsetters, "I'm In Love Again"] So Richard's willpower had been slowly bending, and Sam Cooke's performance was the final straw. Little Richard was going to show everyone what star power really was. When Richard came out on stage, he spent a whole minute in pitch darkness, with the band vamping, before a spotlight suddenly picked him out, in an all-white suit, and he launched into "Long Tall Sally". The British tour was a massive success, and Richard kept becoming wilder and more frantic on stage, as five years of pent up rock and roll burst out of him. Many shows he'd pull off most of his clothes and throw them into the audience, ending up dressed in just a bathrobe, on his knees. He would jump on the piano, and one night he even faked his own death, collapsing off the piano and lying still on the stage in the middle of a song, just to create a tension in the audience for when he suddenly jumped up and started singing "Tutti Frutti". The tour was successful enough, and Richard's performances created such a buzz, that when the package tour itself finished Richard was booked for a few extra gigs, including one at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton where he headlined a bill of local bands from around Merseyside, including one who had released their first single a few weeks earlier. He then went to Hamburg with that group, and spent two months hanging out with them and performing in the same kinds of clubs, and teaching their bass player how he made his “whoo” sounds when singing. Richard was impressed enough by them that he got in touch with Art Rupe, who still had some contractual claim over Richard's own recordings, to tell him about them, but Rupe said that he wasn't interested in some English group, he just wanted Little Richard to go back into the studio and make more records for him. Richard headed back to the US, leaving Billy Preston stranded in Hamburg with his new friends, the Beatles. At first, he still wouldn't record any rock and roll music, other than one song that Sam Cooke wrote for him, "Well Alright", but after another UK tour he started to see that people who had been inspired by him were having the kind of success he thought he was due himself. He went back into the studio, backed by a group including Don and Dewey, who had been performing with him in the UK, and recorded what was meant to be his comeback single, "Bama Lama Bama Loo": [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Bama Lama Bama Loo"] Unfortunately, great as it was, that single didn't do anything in the charts, and Richard spent the rest of the sixties making record after record that failed to chart. Some of them were as good as anything he'd done in his fifties heyday, but his five years away from rock and roll music had killed his career as a recording artist. They hadn't, though, killed him as a live performer, and he would spend the next fifty years touring, playing the hits he had recorded during that classic period from 1955 through 1957, with occasional breaks where he would be overcome by remorse, give up rock and roll music forever, and try to work as an evangelist and gospel singer, before the lure of material success and audience response brought him back to the world of sex and drugs and rock and roll. He eventually gave up performing live a few years ago, as decades of outrageous stage performances had exacerbated his disabilities. His last public performance was in 2013, in Las Vegas, and he was in a wheelchair -- but because he's Little Richard, the wheelchair was made to look like a golden throne.

Episode fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Keep A Knockin'” by Little Richard, the long history of the song, and the tension between its performer’s faith and sexuality. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors.   —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of the information used here comes from The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography by Charles White, which is to all intents and purposes Richard’s autobiography, as much of the text is in his own words. A warning for those who might be considering buying this though — it contains descriptions of his abuse as a child, and is also full of internalised homo- bi- and trans-phobia. This collection contains everything Richard released before 1962, from his early blues singles through to his gospel albums from after he temporarily gave up rock and roll for the church. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum In the podcast I refer to a jazz band as “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group”. Their name is actually “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band”.   Transcript When last we looked at Little Richard properly, he had just had a hit with “Long Tall Sally”, and was at the peak of his career. Since then, we’ve seen that he had become big enough that he was chosen over Fats Domino to record the theme tune to “The Girl Can’t Help It”, and that he was the inspiration for James Brown. But today we’re going to look in more detail at Little Richard’s career in the mid fifties, and at how he threw away that career for his beliefs. [Excerpt: Little Richard with his Band, “Keep A Knockin'”] Richard’s immediate follow-up to “Long Tall Sally” was another of his most successful records, a double-sided hit with both songs credited to John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell — “Rip it Up” backed with “Ready Teddy”. These both went to number one on the R&B charts, but they possibly didn’t have quite the same power as RIchard’s first two singles. Where the earlier singles had been truly unique artefacts, songs that didn’t sound like anything else out there, “Rip it Up” and “Ready Teddy” were both much closer to the typical songs of the time — the lyrics were about going out and having a party and rocking and rolling, rather than about sex with men or cross-dressing sex workers. But this didn’t make Richard any less successful, and throughout 1956 and 57 he kept releasing more hits, often releasing singles where both the A and B side became classics — we’ve discussed “The Girl Can’t Help It” and “She’s Got It” in the episode on “Twenty Flight Rock”, but there was also “Jenny Jenny”, “Send Me Some Lovin'”, and possibly the greatest of them all, “Lucille”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Lucille”] But Richard was getting annoyed at the routine of recording — or more precisely, he was getting annoyed at the musicians he was having to work with in the studio. He was convinced that his own backing band, the Upsetters, were at least as good as the studio musicians, and he was pushing for Specialty to let him use them in the studio. And when they finally let him use the Upsetters in the studio, he recorded a song which had roots which go much further back than you might imagine. “Keep A Knockin'” had a long, long, history. It derives originally from a piece called “A Bunch of Blues”, written by J. Paul Wyer and Alf Kelly in 1915. Wyer was a violin player with W.C. Handy’s band, and Handy recorded the tune in 1917: [Excerpt: W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band, “A Bunch of Blues”] That itself, though, may derive from another song, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole in It”, which is an old jazz standard. There are claims that it was originally played by the great jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden around the turn of the twentieth century. No recordings survive of Bolden playing the song, but a group called “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group” have put together what, other than the use of modern recording, seems a reasonable facsimile of how Bolden would have played the song: [Excerpt: “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it”, the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band] If Bolden did play that, then the melody dates back to around 1906 at the latest, as from 1907 on Bolden was in a psychiatric hospital with schizophrenia, but the 1915 date for “A Bunch of Blues” is the earliest definite date we have for the melody. “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” would later be recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. It was particularly popular among country singers: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It”] But the song took another turn in 1928, when it was recorded by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. This group featured Tampa Red, who would later go on to be a blues legend in his own right, and “Georgia Tom”, who as Thomas Dorsey would later be best known as the writer of much of the core repertoire of gospel music. You might remember us talking about Dorsey in the episode on Rosetta Tharpe. He’s someone who wrote dirty, funny, blues songs until he had a religious experience while on stage, and instead became a writer of religious music, writing songs like “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Peace in the Valley”. But in 1928, he was still Georgia Tom and still recording hokum songs. We talked about hokum music right back in the earliest episodes of the podcast, but as a reminder, hokum music is a form which is now usually lumped into the blues by most of the few people who come across it, but which actually comes from vaudeville and especially from minstrel shows, and was hugely popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. It usually involved simple songs with a verse/chorus structure, and with lyrics that were an extended comedy metaphor, usually some form of innuendo about sex, with titles like “Meat Balls” and “Banana in Your Fruit Basket”. As you can imagine, this kind of music is one that influenced a lot of people who went on to influence Little Richard, and it’s in this crossover genre which had elements of country, blues, and pop that we find “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” turning into the song that would later be known as “Keep A Knockin'”. Tampa Red’s version was titled “You Can’t Come In”, and seems to have been the origin not only of “Keep A Knockin'” but also of the Lead Belly song “Midnight Special” — you can hear the similarity in the guitar melody: [Excerpt: Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band, “You Can’t Come In”] The version by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band wasn’t the first recording to combine the “Keep a Knockin'” lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody — the piano player Bert Mays recorded a version a month earlier, and Mays and his producer Mayo Williams, one of the first black record producers, are usually credited as the songwriters as a result (with Little Richard also being credited on his version). Mays was in turn probably inspired by an earlier recording by James “Boodle It” Wiggins, but Wiggins had a different melody — Mays seems to be the one who first combined the lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody on a recording. But the idea was probably one that had been knocking around for a while in various forms, given the number of different variations of the melody that turn up, and Tampa Red’s version inspired all the future recordings. As hokum music lies at the roots of both blues and country, it’s not surprising that “You Can’t Come in” was picked up by both country and blues musicians. A version of the song, for example, was recorded by, among others, Milton Brown — who had been an early musical partner of Bob Wills and one of the people who helped create Western Swing. [Excerpt: Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies: “Keep A Knockin'”] But the version that Little Richard recorded was most likely inspired by Louis Jordan’s version. Jordan was, of course, Richard’s single biggest musical inspiration, so we can reasonably assume that the record by Jordan was the one that pushed him to record the song. [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Keep A Knockin'”] The Jordan record was probably brought to mind in 1955 when Smiley Lewis had a hit with Dave Bartholomew’s take on the idea. “I Hear You Knockin'” only bears a slight melodic resemblance to “Keep A Knockin'”, but the lyrics are so obviously inspired by the earlier song that it would have brought it to mind for anyone who had heard any of the earlier versions: [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, “I Hear You Knockin'”] That was also recorded by Fats Domino, one of Little Richard’s favourite musicians, so we can be sure that Richard had heard it. So by the time Little Richard came to record “Keep A Knockin'” in very early 1957, he had a host of different versions he could draw on for inspiration. But what we ended up with is something that’s uniquely Little Richard — something that was altogether wilder: [Excerpt: Little Richard and his band, “Keep A Knockin'”] In some takes of the song, Richard also sang a verse about drinking gin, which was based on Louis Jordan’s version which had a similar verse: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Keep A Knockin'”, “drinking gin” verse from take three] But in the end, what they ended up with was only about fifty-seven seconds worth of usable recording. Listening to the session recording, it seems that Grady Gaines kept trying different things with his saxophone solo, and not all of them quite worked as well as might be hoped — there are a few infelicities in most of his solos, though not anything that you wouldn’t expect from a good player trying new things. To get it to a usable length, they copied and pasted the whole song from the start of Richard’s vocal through to the end of the saxophone solo, and almost doubled the length of the song — the third and fourth verses, and the second saxophone solo, are the same recording as the first and second verses and the first sax solo. If you want to try this yourself, it seems that the “whoo” after the first “keep a knockin’ but you can’t come in” after the second sax solo is the point where the copy/pasting ends. But even though the recording ended up being a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, it remains one of Little Richard’s greatest tracks. At the same session, he also recorded another of his very best records, “Ooh! My Soul!”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Ooh! My Soul!”] That session also produced a single for Richard’s chauffeur, with Richard on the piano, released under the name “Pretty Boy”: [Excerpt: Pretty Boy, “Bip Bop Bip”] “Pretty Boy” would later go on to be better known as Don Covay, and would have great success as a soul singer and songwriter. He’s now probably best known for writing “Chain of Fools” for Aretha Franklin. That session was a productive one, but other than one final session in October 1957, in which he knocked out a couple of blues songs as album fillers, it would be Little Richard’s last rock and roll recording session for several years. Richard had always been deeply conflicted about… well, about everything, really. He was attracted to men as well as women, he loved rock and roll and rhythm and blues music, loved eating chitlins and pork chops, drinking, and taking drugs, and was unsure about his own gender identity. He was also deeply, deeply, religious, and a believer in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which believed that same-sex attraction, trans identities, and secular music were the work of the Devil, and that one should keep a vegetarian and kosher diet, and avoid all drugs, even caffeine. This came to a head in October 1957. Richard was on a tour of Australia with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Alis Lesley, who was another of the many singers billed as “the female Elvis Presley”: [Excerpt: Alis Lesley, “He Will Come Back To Me”] Vincent actually had to miss the first couple of shows on the tour, as he and the Blue Caps got held up in Honolulu, apparently due to visa issues, and couldn’t continue on to Australia with the rest of the tour until that was sorted out. They were replaced on those early shows by a local group, Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays, who performed some of Vincent’s songs as well as their own material, and who managed to win the audiences round even though they were irritated at Vincent’s absence. O’Keefe isn’t someone we’re going to be able to discuss in much detail in this series, because he had very little impact outside of Australia. But within Australia, he’s something of a legend as their first home-grown rock and roll star. And he did make one record which people outside of Australia have heard of — his biggest hit, from 1958, “Wild One”, which has since been covered by, amongst others, Jerry Lee Lewis and Iggy Pop: [Excerpt: Johnny O’Keefe, “Wild One”] The flight to Australia was longer and more difficult than any Richard had experienced before, and at one point he looked out of the window and saw the engines glowing red. He became convinced that the plane was on fire, and being held up by angels. He became even more worried a couple of days later when Russia launched their first satellite, Sputnik, and it passed low over Australia — low enough that he claimed he could see it, like a fireball in the sky, while he was performing. He decided this was a sign, and that he was being told by God that he needed to give up his life of sin and devote himself to religion. He told the other people on the tour this, but they didn’t believe him — until he threw all his rings into the ocean to prove it. He insisted on cancelling his appearances with ten days of the tour left to go and travelling back to the US with his band. He has often also claimed that the plane they were originally scheduled to fly back on crashed in the Pacific on the flight he would have been on — I’ve seen no evidence anywhere else of this, and I have looked. When he got back, he cut one final session for Specialty, and then went into a seminary to start studying for the ministry. While his religious belief is genuine, there has been some suggestion that this move wasn’t solely motivated by his conversion. Rather, John Marascalco has often claimed that Richard’s real reason for his conversion was based on more worldly considerations. Richard’s contract with Specialty was only paying him half a cent per record sold, which he considered far too low, and the wording of the contract only let him end it on either his own death or an act of god. He was trying — according to Marascalco — to claim that his religious awakening was an act of God, and so he should be allowed to break his contract and sign with another label. Whatever the truth, Specialty had enough of a backlog of Little Richard recordings that they could keep issuing them for the next couple of years. Some of those, like “Good Golly Miss Molly” were as good as anything he had ever recorded. and rightly became big hits: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Many others, though, were substandard recordings that they originally had no plans to release — but with Richard effectively on strike and the demand for his recordings undiminished, they put out whatever they had. Richard went out on the road as an evangelist, but also went to study to become a priest. He changed his whole lifestyle — he married a woman, although they would later divorce as, among other things, they weren’t sexually compatible. He stopped drinking and taking drugs, stopped even drinking coffee, and started eating only vegetables cooked in vegetable oil. After the lawsuits over him quitting Specialty records were finally settled, he started recording again, but only gospel songs: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”] And that was how things stood for several years. The tension between Richard’s sexuality and his religion continued to torment him — he dropped out of the seminary after propositioning another male student, and he was arrested in a public toilet — but he continued his evangelism and gospel singing until October 1962, when he went on tour in the UK. Just like the previous tour which had been a turning point in his life, this one featured Gene Vincent, but was also affected by Vincent’s work permit problems. This time, Vincent was allowed in the country but wasn’t allowed to perform on stage — so he appeared only as the compere, at least at the start of the tour — later on, he would sing “Be Bop A Lula” from offstage as well. Vincent wasn’t the only one to have problems, either. Sam Cooke, who was the second-billed star for the show, was delayed and couldn’t make the first show, which was a bit of a disaster. Richard was accompanied by a young gospel organ player named Billy Preston, and he’d agreed to the tour under the impression that he was going to be performing only his gospel music. Don Arden, the promoter, had been promoting it as Richard’s first rock and roll tour in five years, and the audience were very far from impressed when Richard came on stage in flowing white robes and started singing “Peace in the Valley” and other gospel songs. Arden was apoplectic. If Richard didn’t start performing rock and roll songs soon, he would have to cancel the whole tour — an audience that wanted “Rip it Up” and “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti Frutti” wasn’t going to put up with being preached at. Arden didn’t know what to do, and when Sam Cooke and his manager J.W. Alexander turned up to the second show, Arden had a talk with Alexander about it. Alexander told Arden he had nothing to worry about — he knew Little Richard of old, and knew that Richard couldn’t stand to be upstaged. He also knew how good Sam Cooke was. Cooke was at the height of his success at this point, and he was an astonishing live performer, and so when he went out on stage and closed the first half, including an incendiary performance of “Twistin’ the Night Away” that left the audience applauding through the intermission, Richard knew he had to up his game. While he’d not been performing rock and roll in public, he had been tempted back into the studio to record in his old style at least once before, when he’d joined his old group to record Fats Domino’s “I’m In Love Again”, for a single that didn’t get released until December 1962. The single was released as by “the World Famous Upsetters”, but the vocalist on the record was very recognisable: [Excerpt: The World Famous Upsetters, “I’m In Love Again”] So Richard’s willpower had been slowly bending, and Sam Cooke’s performance was the final straw. Little Richard was going to show everyone what star power really was. When Richard came out on stage, he spent a whole minute in pitch darkness, with the band vamping, before a spotlight suddenly picked him out, in an all-white suit, and he launched into “Long Tall Sally”. The British tour was a massive success, and Richard kept becoming wilder and more frantic on stage, as five years of pent up rock and roll burst out of him. Many shows he’d pull off most of his clothes and throw them into the audience, ending up dressed in just a bathrobe, on his knees. He would jump on the piano, and one night he even faked his own death, collapsing off the piano and lying still on the stage in the middle of a song, just to create a tension in the audience for when he suddenly jumped up and started singing “Tutti Frutti”. The tour was successful enough, and Richard’s performances created such a buzz, that when the package tour itself finished Richard was booked for a few extra gigs, including one at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton where he headlined a bill of local bands from around Merseyside, including one who had released their first single a few weeks earlier. He then went to Hamburg with that group, and spent two months hanging out with them and performing in the same kinds of clubs, and teaching their bass player how he made his “whoo” sounds when singing. Richard was impressed enough by them that he got in touch with Art Rupe, who still had some contractual claim over Richard’s own recordings, to tell him about them, but Rupe said that he wasn’t interested in some English group, he just wanted Little Richard to go back into the studio and make more records for him. Richard headed back to the US, leaving Billy Preston stranded in Hamburg with his new friends, the Beatles. At first, he still wouldn’t record any rock and roll music, other than one song that Sam Cooke wrote for him, “Well Alright”, but after another UK tour he started to see that people who had been inspired by him were having the kind of success he thought he was due himself. He went back into the studio, backed by a group including Don and Dewey, who had been performing with him in the UK, and recorded what was meant to be his comeback single, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”] Unfortunately, great as it was, that single didn’t do anything in the charts, and Richard spent the rest of the sixties making record after record that failed to chart. Some of them were as good as anything he’d done in his fifties heyday, but his five years away from rock and roll music had killed his career as a recording artist. They hadn’t, though, killed him as a live performer, and he would spend the next fifty years touring, playing the hits he had recorded during that classic period from 1955 through 1957, with occasional breaks where he would be overcome by remorse, give up rock and roll music forever, and try to work as an evangelist and gospel singer, before the lure of material success and audience response brought him back to the world of sex and drugs and rock and roll. He eventually gave up performing live a few years ago, as decades of outrageous stage performances had exacerbated his disabilities. His last public performance was in 2013, in Las Vegas, and he was in a wheelchair — but because he’s Little Richard, the wheelchair was made to look like a golden throne.

Episode fifty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Keep A Knockin'” by Little Richard, the long history of the song, and the tension between its performer’s faith and sexuality. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.   Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “At the Hop” by Danny and the Juniors.   —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of the information used here comes from The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Authorised Biography by Charles White, which is to all intents and purposes Richard’s autobiography, as much of the text is in his own words. A warning for those who might be considering buying this though — it contains descriptions of his abuse as a child, and is also full of internalised homo- bi- and trans-phobia. This collection contains everything Richard released before 1962, from his early blues singles through to his gospel albums from after he temporarily gave up rock and roll for the church. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum In the podcast I refer to a jazz band as “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group”. Their name is actually “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band”.   Transcript When last we looked at Little Richard properly, he had just had a hit with “Long Tall Sally”, and was at the peak of his career. Since then, we’ve seen that he had become big enough that he was chosen over Fats Domino to record the theme tune to “The Girl Can’t Help It”, and that he was the inspiration for James Brown. But today we’re going to look in more detail at Little Richard’s career in the mid fifties, and at how he threw away that career for his beliefs. [Excerpt: Little Richard with his Band, “Keep A Knockin'”] Richard’s immediate follow-up to “Long Tall Sally” was another of his most successful records, a double-sided hit with both songs credited to John Marascalco and Bumps Blackwell — “Rip it Up” backed with “Ready Teddy”. These both went to number one on the R&B charts, but they possibly didn’t have quite the same power as RIchard’s first two singles. Where the earlier singles had been truly unique artefacts, songs that didn’t sound like anything else out there, “Rip it Up” and “Ready Teddy” were both much closer to the typical songs of the time — the lyrics were about going out and having a party and rocking and rolling, rather than about sex with men or cross-dressing sex workers. But this didn’t make Richard any less successful, and throughout 1956 and 57 he kept releasing more hits, often releasing singles where both the A and B side became classics — we’ve discussed “The Girl Can’t Help It” and “She’s Got It” in the episode on “Twenty Flight Rock”, but there was also “Jenny Jenny”, “Send Me Some Lovin'”, and possibly the greatest of them all, “Lucille”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Lucille”] But Richard was getting annoyed at the routine of recording — or more precisely, he was getting annoyed at the musicians he was having to work with in the studio. He was convinced that his own backing band, the Upsetters, were at least as good as the studio musicians, and he was pushing for Specialty to let him use them in the studio. And when they finally let him use the Upsetters in the studio, he recorded a song which had roots which go much further back than you might imagine. “Keep A Knockin'” had a long, long, history. It derives originally from a piece called “A Bunch of Blues”, written by J. Paul Wyer and Alf Kelly in 1915. Wyer was a violin player with W.C. Handy’s band, and Handy recorded the tune in 1917: [Excerpt: W.C. Handy’s Memphis Blues Band, “A Bunch of Blues”] That itself, though, may derive from another song, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole in It”, which is an old jazz standard. There are claims that it was originally played by the great jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden around the turn of the twentieth century. No recordings survive of Bolden playing the song, but a group called “the Buddy Bolden Legacy Group” have put together what, other than the use of modern recording, seems a reasonable facsimile of how Bolden would have played the song: [Excerpt: “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it”, the Buddy Bolden Legacy Band] If Bolden did play that, then the melody dates back to around 1906 at the latest, as from 1907 on Bolden was in a psychiatric hospital with schizophrenia, but the 1915 date for “A Bunch of Blues” is the earliest definite date we have for the melody. “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” would later be recorded by everyone from Hank Williams to Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis. It was particularly popular among country singers: [Excerpt: Hank Williams, “My Bucket’s Got A Hole In It”] But the song took another turn in 1928, when it was recorded by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band. This group featured Tampa Red, who would later go on to be a blues legend in his own right, and “Georgia Tom”, who as Thomas Dorsey would later be best known as the writer of much of the core repertoire of gospel music. You might remember us talking about Dorsey in the episode on Rosetta Tharpe. He’s someone who wrote dirty, funny, blues songs until he had a religious experience while on stage, and instead became a writer of religious music, writing songs like “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Peace in the Valley”. But in 1928, he was still Georgia Tom and still recording hokum songs. We talked about hokum music right back in the earliest episodes of the podcast, but as a reminder, hokum music is a form which is now usually lumped into the blues by most of the few people who come across it, but which actually comes from vaudeville and especially from minstrel shows, and was hugely popular in the early decades of the twentieth century. It usually involved simple songs with a verse/chorus structure, and with lyrics that were an extended comedy metaphor, usually some form of innuendo about sex, with titles like “Meat Balls” and “Banana in Your Fruit Basket”. As you can imagine, this kind of music is one that influenced a lot of people who went on to influence Little Richard, and it’s in this crossover genre which had elements of country, blues, and pop that we find “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in it” turning into the song that would later be known as “Keep A Knockin'”. Tampa Red’s version was titled “You Can’t Come In”, and seems to have been the origin not only of “Keep A Knockin'” but also of the Lead Belly song “Midnight Special” — you can hear the similarity in the guitar melody: [Excerpt: Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band, “You Can’t Come In”] The version by Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band wasn’t the first recording to combine the “Keep a Knockin'” lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody — the piano player Bert Mays recorded a version a month earlier, and Mays and his producer Mayo Williams, one of the first black record producers, are usually credited as the songwriters as a result (with Little Richard also being credited on his version). Mays was in turn probably inspired by an earlier recording by James “Boodle It” Wiggins, but Wiggins had a different melody — Mays seems to be the one who first combined the lyrics with the “My Bucket’s Got a Hole In It” melody on a recording. But the idea was probably one that had been knocking around for a while in various forms, given the number of different variations of the melody that turn up, and Tampa Red’s version inspired all the future recordings. As hokum music lies at the roots of both blues and country, it’s not surprising that “You Can’t Come in” was picked up by both country and blues musicians. A version of the song, for example, was recorded by, among others, Milton Brown — who had been an early musical partner of Bob Wills and one of the people who helped create Western Swing. [Excerpt: Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies: “Keep A Knockin'”] But the version that Little Richard recorded was most likely inspired by Louis Jordan’s version. Jordan was, of course, Richard’s single biggest musical inspiration, so we can reasonably assume that the record by Jordan was the one that pushed him to record the song. [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, “Keep A Knockin'”] The Jordan record was probably brought to mind in 1955 when Smiley Lewis had a hit with Dave Bartholomew’s take on the idea. “I Hear You Knockin'” only bears a slight melodic resemblance to “Keep A Knockin'”, but the lyrics are so obviously inspired by the earlier song that it would have brought it to mind for anyone who had heard any of the earlier versions: [Excerpt: Smiley Lewis, “I Hear You Knockin'”] That was also recorded by Fats Domino, one of Little Richard’s favourite musicians, so we can be sure that Richard had heard it. So by the time Little Richard came to record “Keep A Knockin'” in very early 1957, he had a host of different versions he could draw on for inspiration. But what we ended up with is something that’s uniquely Little Richard — something that was altogether wilder: [Excerpt: Little Richard and his band, “Keep A Knockin'”] In some takes of the song, Richard also sang a verse about drinking gin, which was based on Louis Jordan’s version which had a similar verse: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Keep A Knockin'”, “drinking gin” verse from take three] But in the end, what they ended up with was only about fifty-seven seconds worth of usable recording. Listening to the session recording, it seems that Grady Gaines kept trying different things with his saxophone solo, and not all of them quite worked as well as might be hoped — there are a few infelicities in most of his solos, though not anything that you wouldn’t expect from a good player trying new things. To get it to a usable length, they copied and pasted the whole song from the start of Richard’s vocal through to the end of the saxophone solo, and almost doubled the length of the song — the third and fourth verses, and the second saxophone solo, are the same recording as the first and second verses and the first sax solo. If you want to try this yourself, it seems that the “whoo” after the first “keep a knockin’ but you can’t come in” after the second sax solo is the point where the copy/pasting ends. But even though the recording ended up being a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, it remains one of Little Richard’s greatest tracks. At the same session, he also recorded another of his very best records, “Ooh! My Soul!”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Ooh! My Soul!”] That session also produced a single for Richard’s chauffeur, with Richard on the piano, released under the name “Pretty Boy”: [Excerpt: Pretty Boy, “Bip Bop Bip”] “Pretty Boy” would later go on to be better known as Don Covay, and would have great success as a soul singer and songwriter. He’s now probably best known for writing “Chain of Fools” for Aretha Franklin. That session was a productive one, but other than one final session in October 1957, in which he knocked out a couple of blues songs as album fillers, it would be Little Richard’s last rock and roll recording session for several years. Richard had always been deeply conflicted about… well, about everything, really. He was attracted to men as well as women, he loved rock and roll and rhythm and blues music, loved eating chitlins and pork chops, drinking, and taking drugs, and was unsure about his own gender identity. He was also deeply, deeply, religious, and a believer in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which believed that same-sex attraction, trans identities, and secular music were the work of the Devil, and that one should keep a vegetarian and kosher diet, and avoid all drugs, even caffeine. This came to a head in October 1957. Richard was on a tour of Australia with Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, and Alis Lesley, who was another of the many singers billed as “the female Elvis Presley”: [Excerpt: Alis Lesley, “He Will Come Back To Me”] Vincent actually had to miss the first couple of shows on the tour, as he and the Blue Caps got held up in Honolulu, apparently due to visa issues, and couldn’t continue on to Australia with the rest of the tour until that was sorted out. They were replaced on those early shows by a local group, Johnny O’Keefe and the Dee Jays, who performed some of Vincent’s songs as well as their own material, and who managed to win the audiences round even though they were irritated at Vincent’s absence. O’Keefe isn’t someone we’re going to be able to discuss in much detail in this series, because he had very little impact outside of Australia. But within Australia, he’s something of a legend as their first home-grown rock and roll star. And he did make one record which people outside of Australia have heard of — his biggest hit, from 1958, “Wild One”, which has since been covered by, amongst others, Jerry Lee Lewis and Iggy Pop: [Excerpt: Johnny O’Keefe, “Wild One”] The flight to Australia was longer and more difficult than any Richard had experienced before, and at one point he looked out of the window and saw the engines glowing red. He became convinced that the plane was on fire, and being held up by angels. He became even more worried a couple of days later when Russia launched their first satellite, Sputnik, and it passed low over Australia — low enough that he claimed he could see it, like a fireball in the sky, while he was performing. He decided this was a sign, and that he was being told by God that he needed to give up his life of sin and devote himself to religion. He told the other people on the tour this, but they didn’t believe him — until he threw all his rings into the ocean to prove it. He insisted on cancelling his appearances with ten days of the tour left to go and travelling back to the US with his band. He has often also claimed that the plane they were originally scheduled to fly back on crashed in the Pacific on the flight he would have been on — I’ve seen no evidence anywhere else of this, and I have looked. When he got back, he cut one final session for Specialty, and then went into a seminary to start studying for the ministry. While his religious belief is genuine, there has been some suggestion that this move wasn’t solely motivated by his conversion. Rather, John Marascalco has often claimed that Richard’s real reason for his conversion was based on more worldly considerations. Richard’s contract with Specialty was only paying him half a cent per record sold, which he considered far too low, and the wording of the contract only let him end it on either his own death or an act of god. He was trying — according to Marascalco — to claim that his religious awakening was an act of God, and so he should be allowed to break his contract and sign with another label. Whatever the truth, Specialty had enough of a backlog of Little Richard recordings that they could keep issuing them for the next couple of years. Some of those, like “Good Golly Miss Molly” were as good as anything he had ever recorded. and rightly became big hits: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Good Golly Miss Molly”] Many others, though, were substandard recordings that they originally had no plans to release — but with Richard effectively on strike and the demand for his recordings undiminished, they put out whatever they had. Richard went out on the road as an evangelist, but also went to study to become a priest. He changed his whole lifestyle — he married a woman, although they would later divorce as, among other things, they weren’t sexually compatible. He stopped drinking and taking drugs, stopped even drinking coffee, and started eating only vegetables cooked in vegetable oil. After the lawsuits over him quitting Specialty records were finally settled, he started recording again, but only gospel songs: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”] And that was how things stood for several years. The tension between Richard’s sexuality and his religion continued to torment him — he dropped out of the seminary after propositioning another male student, and he was arrested in a public toilet — but he continued his evangelism and gospel singing until October 1962, when he went on tour in the UK. Just like the previous tour which had been a turning point in his life, this one featured Gene Vincent, but was also affected by Vincent’s work permit problems. This time, Vincent was allowed in the country but wasn’t allowed to perform on stage — so he appeared only as the compere, at least at the start of the tour — later on, he would sing “Be Bop A Lula” from offstage as well. Vincent wasn’t the only one to have problems, either. Sam Cooke, who was the second-billed star for the show, was delayed and couldn’t make the first show, which was a bit of a disaster. Richard was accompanied by a young gospel organ player named Billy Preston, and he’d agreed to the tour under the impression that he was going to be performing only his gospel music. Don Arden, the promoter, had been promoting it as Richard’s first rock and roll tour in five years, and the audience were very far from impressed when Richard came on stage in flowing white robes and started singing “Peace in the Valley” and other gospel songs. Arden was apoplectic. If Richard didn’t start performing rock and roll songs soon, he would have to cancel the whole tour — an audience that wanted “Rip it Up” and “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti Frutti” wasn’t going to put up with being preached at. Arden didn’t know what to do, and when Sam Cooke and his manager J.W. Alexander turned up to the second show, Arden had a talk with Alexander about it. Alexander told Arden he had nothing to worry about — he knew Little Richard of old, and knew that Richard couldn’t stand to be upstaged. He also knew how good Sam Cooke was. Cooke was at the height of his success at this point, and he was an astonishing live performer, and so when he went out on stage and closed the first half, including an incendiary performance of “Twistin’ the Night Away” that left the audience applauding through the intermission, Richard knew he had to up his game. While he’d not been performing rock and roll in public, he had been tempted back into the studio to record in his old style at least once before, when he’d joined his old group to record Fats Domino’s “I’m In Love Again”, for a single that didn’t get released until December 1962. The single was released as by “the World Famous Upsetters”, but the vocalist on the record was very recognisable: [Excerpt: The World Famous Upsetters, “I’m In Love Again”] So Richard’s willpower had been slowly bending, and Sam Cooke’s performance was the final straw. Little Richard was going to show everyone what star power really was. When Richard came out on stage, he spent a whole minute in pitch darkness, with the band vamping, before a spotlight suddenly picked him out, in an all-white suit, and he launched into “Long Tall Sally”. The British tour was a massive success, and Richard kept becoming wilder and more frantic on stage, as five years of pent up rock and roll burst out of him. Many shows he’d pull off most of his clothes and throw them into the audience, ending up dressed in just a bathrobe, on his knees. He would jump on the piano, and one night he even faked his own death, collapsing off the piano and lying still on the stage in the middle of a song, just to create a tension in the audience for when he suddenly jumped up and started singing “Tutti Frutti”. The tour was successful enough, and Richard’s performances created such a buzz, that when the package tour itself finished Richard was booked for a few extra gigs, including one at the Tower Ballroom in New Brighton where he headlined a bill of local bands from around Merseyside, including one who had released their first single a few weeks earlier. He then went to Hamburg with that group, and spent two months hanging out with them and performing in the same kinds of clubs, and teaching their bass player how he made his “whoo” sounds when singing. Richard was impressed enough by them that he got in touch with Art Rupe, who still had some contractual claim over Richard’s own recordings, to tell him about them, but Rupe said that he wasn’t interested in some English group, he just wanted Little Richard to go back into the studio and make more records for him. Richard headed back to the US, leaving Billy Preston stranded in Hamburg with his new friends, the Beatles. At first, he still wouldn’t record any rock and roll music, other than one song that Sam Cooke wrote for him, “Well Alright”, but after another UK tour he started to see that people who had been inspired by him were having the kind of success he thought he was due himself. He went back into the studio, backed by a group including Don and Dewey, who had been performing with him in the UK, and recorded what was meant to be his comeback single, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Bama Lama Bama Loo”] Unfortunately, great as it was, that single didn’t do anything in the charts, and Richard spent the rest of the sixties making record after record that failed to chart. Some of them were as good as anything he’d done in his fifties heyday, but his five years away from rock and roll music had killed his career as a recording artist. They hadn’t, though, killed him as a live performer, and he would spend the next fifty years touring, playing the hits he had recorded during that classic period from 1955 through 1957, with occasional breaks where he would be overcome by remorse, give up rock and roll music forever, and try to work as an evangelist and gospel singer, before the lure of material success and audience response brought him back to the world of sex and drugs and rock and roll. He eventually gave up performing live a few years ago, as decades of outrageous stage performances had exacerbated his disabilities. His last public performance was in 2013, in Las Vegas, and he was in a wheelchair — but because he’s Little Richard, the wheelchair was made to look like a golden throne.

Je hoort muziek van The Gourds, Tampa Red, Johnny Cash, Otis Clay, Native Harrow en Wilco, Het album van de week is van Whiskey Myers met gelijknamige titel!

Je hoort muziek van The Gourds, Tampa Red, Johnny Cash, Otis Clay, Native Harrow en Wilco, Het album van de week is van Whiskey Myers met gelijknamige titel!

    Episode thirty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Please Please Please” by James Brown, and at the early rock and roll career of the Godfather of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Come Go With Me” by the Del Vikings. —-more—-  Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.  I relied mostly on two books for this episode. James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, by James Brown with Bruce Tucker, is a celebrity autobiography with all that that entails, but a more interesting read than many.  Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, by James McBride is a more discursive, gonzo journalism piece, and well worth a read. And this two-CD compilation has all Brown’s singles from 1956 through 61.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just as the other week we talked about a country musician who had a massive impact on rock and roll, one who was originally marketed as a rock and roller, so today we’re going to talk about a funk and soul musician who got his first hits playing to the rock and roll audience.   There is a type of musician we will come across a lot as our story progresses. He is almost always a man, and he is usually regarded as a musical genius. He will be focused only on two things — his music and his money — and will have basically no friends, except maybe one from his childhood. He has employees, not friends. And he only hires the best — his employees do staggering work while being treated appallingly by him, and he takes all the credit while they do most of the work. Yet at the same time, the work those employees do ends up sounding like that genius, and when they go on to do their own stuff without him, it never sounds quite as good. That one percent he’s adding does make the difference. He’s never really liked as a person by his employees, but he’s grudgingly respected, and he’s loved by his audience.   There are people like that in every creative field — one thinks of Stan Lee in comics, or Walt Disney in film — but there are a *lot* of them in music, and they are responsible for an outsized portion of the most influential music ever made. And James Brown is almost the archetypal example of this kind of musician.   James Brown had a hard, hard childhood. His mother left his father when James was four — stories say that Brown’s father pulled a gun on her, so her wanting to get away seems entirely reasonable, but she left her son with him, and James felt abandoned and betrayed for much of his life. A few years later his father realised that he didn’t have the ability to look after a child by himself, and dumped James on a relative he always called an aunt, though she was some form of cousin, to raise. His aunt ran a brothel, and it’s safe to say that that was not the best possible environment in which to raise a young child. He later said that he was in his teens before he had any underwear that was bought from a shop rather than made out of old sacks. In later life, when other people would talk about having come from broken homes and having been abandoned by their fathers, he would say “How do you think I feel? My father *and my mother* left me!”   But he had ambition. Young James had entered — and won — talent shows from a very young age — his first one was in 1944, when he was eleven, and he performed “So Long”, the song that would a few years later become Ruth Brown’s first big hit, but was then best known in a version by the Charioteers:   [Excerpt: The Charioteers, “So Long”]   He loved music, especially jazz and gospel, and he was eager to learn anything he could about it. The one form of music he could never get into was the blues — his father played a little blues, but it wasn’t young James’ musical interest at all — but even there, when Tampa Red started dating one of the sex workers who worked at his aunt’s house, young James Brown learned what he could from the blues legend.   He learned to sing from the holiness churches, and his music would always have a gospel flavour to it. But the music he liked more than anything was that style of jazz and swing music that was blending into what was becoming R&B. He loved Count Basie, and used to try to teach himself to play “One O’Clock Jump”, Count Basie’s biggest hit, on the piano:   [Excerpt: Count Basie, “One O’Clock Jump”]   That style of music wouldn’t show up in his earlier records, which were mostly fairly standard vocal group R&B, but if you listen to his much later funk recordings, they owe a *lot* to Basie and Lionel Hampton. The music that Brown became most famous for is the logical conclusion to the style that those musicians developed — though we’ll talk more about the invention of funk, and how funk is a form of jazz, in a future episode. But his real favourite, the one he tried to emulate more than any other, was Louis Jordan. Brown didn’t get to see Jordan live as a child, but he would listen to his records on the radio and see him in film shorts, and he decided that more than anything else he wanted to be like Jordan. As soon as he started performing with small groups around town, he started singing Jordan’s songs, especially “Caldonia”, which years later he would record as a tribute to his idol:   [Excerpt: James Brown, “Caldonia”]   But as you might imagine, life for young James Brown wasn’t the easiest, and he eventually fell into robbery. This started when he was disciplined at school for not being dressed appropriately — so he went out and stole himself some better clothes. He started to do the same for his friends, and then moved on to more serious types of theft, including cars, and he ended up getting caught breaking into one.   At the age of sixteen, Brown was sent to a juvenile detention centre, on a sentence of eight to sixteen years, and this inadvertently led to the biggest piece of luck in his life, when he met the man who would be his mentor and principal creative partner for the next twenty years. There was a baseball game between inmates of the detention centre and a team of outsiders, one of whom was named Bobby Byrd, and Byrd got talking to Brown and discovered that he could sing. In fact Brown had put together a little band in the detention centre, using improvised instruments, and would often play the piano in the gym. He’d got enough of a reputation for being able to play that he’d acquired the nickname “Music Box” — and Byrd had heard about him even outside the prison.   At the time, Byrd was leading a gospel vocal group, and needed a new singer, and he was impressed enough with Brown that he put in a word for him at a parole hearing and helped him get released early. James Brown was going to devote his life to singing for the Lord, and he wasn’t going to sin any more. He got out of the detention centre after serving only three years of his sentence, though you can imagine that to a teen there was not much “only” about spending three years of your life locked up, especially in Georgia in the 1940s, a time and place when the white guards were free to be racially abusive to an even greater extent than they are today. And for the next ten years, throughout his early musical career, Brown would be on parole and in danger of being recalled to prison at any time.   Brown ended up joining Byrd’s *sister’s* gospel group, at least for a while, before moving over to Byrd’s own group, which had originally been a gospel group called the Gospel Starlighters, but by now was an R&B group called the Avons. They soon renamed themselves again, to the Flames, and later to the *Famous* Flames, the name they would stick with from then on (and a name which would cause a lot of confusion, as we’ve already talked about the Hollywood Flames, who featured a different Bobby Byrd). Brown’s friend Johnny Terry, who he had performed with in the detention centre, also joined the group. There would be many lineups of the Famous Flames, but Brown, Byrd, and Terry would be the nucleus of most of them.   Brown was massively influenced by Little Richard, to the extent that he was essentially a Little Richard tribute act early on. Brown felt an immediate kinship with Richard’s music because both of them were from Georgia, both were massively influenced by Louis Jordan, and both were inspired by church music. Brown would later go off in his own direction, of course, but in those early years he sounded more like Little Richard than like anyone else.   In fact, around this time, Little Richard’s career was doing so well that he could suddenly be booked into much bigger halls than he had been playing. He still had a few months’ worth of contracts in those old halls, though, and so his agent had a brainwave. No-one knew what Richard looked like, so the agent got Brown and the Flames to pretend to be Little Richard and the Upsetters and tour playing the gigs that Richard had been booked into. Every night Brown would go out on stage to the introduction, “Please welcome the hardest working man in showbusiness today, Little Richard!”, and when he finished ghosting for Little Richard, he liked the introduction enough that he would keep it for himself, changing it only to his own name rather than Richard’s. Brown would perform a mixture of Richard’s material, his own originals, and the R&B songs that the Flames had been performing around Georgia. They’d already been cutting some records for tiny labels, at least according to Brown’s autobiography, mostly cover versions of R&B hits. I haven’t been able to track down any of these, but one that Brown mentions in his autobiography is “So Long”, which he later rerecorded in 1961, and that version might give you some idea of what Brown sounded like at the period when he was trying to be Little Richard:   [Excerpt: James Brown, “So Long”]   Brown’s imitation of Richard went down well enough that Richard’s agent, Clint Brantley, decided to get the group to record a demo of themselves doing their own material.   They chose to do a song called “Please, Please, Please”, written by Brown and Johnny Terry. The song was based on something that Little Richard had scribbled on a napkin, which Brown decided would make a good title for a song. The song fits neatly into a particular genre of R&B ballad, typified by for example, Richard’s “Directly From My Heart to You”:   [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Directly From My Heart to You”]   Though both “Directly From My Heart” and “Please Please Please” owe more than a little to “Shake A Hand” by Faye Adams, the song that inspired almost all slow-burn blues ballads in this period:   [Excerpt: Faye Adams, “Shake a Hand”]   However, the real key to the song came when Brown heard the Orioles’ version of Big Joe Williams’ “Baby Please Don’t Go”, and used their backing vocal arrangement:   [Excerpt: The Orioles, “Baby Please Don’t Go”]   The Famous Flames were patterning themselves more and more on two groups — Billy Ward and the Dominoes, whose records with Clyde McPhatter as lead singer had paved the way for vocal group R&B as a genre, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, whose “Work With Me Annie” had had, for the time, a blatant sexuality that was unusual in successful records. They were going for energy, and for pure expression of visceral emotion, rather than the smooth sophisticated sounds of the Platters or Penguins.   They were signed to Federal Records, a subsidiary of King, by Ralph Bass, the visionary A&R man we’ve dealt with in many other episodes. Bass was absolutely convinced that “Please Please Please” would be a hit, and championed the Flames in the face of opposition from his boss, Syd Nathan. Nathan thought that the song just consisted of Brown screaming one word over and over again, and that there was no way on earth that it could be a hit. In Brown’s autobiography (not the most reliable of sources) he even claims that Bass was sacked for putting out the record against Nathan’s will, but then rehired when the record became a hit. I’m not sure if that’s literally true, but it’s a story that shows the emotional truth of the period — Bass was the only person at the record company with any faith in the Famous Flames.   But the song became hugely popular. The emotion in Brown’s singing was particularly effective on a particular type of woman, who would feel intensely sorry for Brown, and who would want to make that poor man feel better. Some woman had obviously hurt him terribly, and he needed the right woman to fix his hurt. It was a powerful, heartbreaking, song, and an even more powerful performance:   [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, “Please Please Please”]   The song would eventually become one of the staples in the group’s live repertoire, and they would develop an elaborate routine about it. Brown would drop to his knees, sobbing, and the other band members would drape him in a cape — something that was inspired by a caped wrestler, Gorgeous George — and try to lead him off stage, concerned for him. Brown would pull away from them, feigning distress, and try to continue singing the song while his bandmates tried to get him off the stage.   Sometimes it would go even further — Brown talks in his autobiography about one show, supporting Little Richard, where he climbed into the rafters of the ceiling, hung from the ceiling while singing, and dropped into the waiting arms of the band members at the climax of the show.   But there was trouble in store. The record reached number six on the R&B chart and supposedly sold between one and three million copies, though record companies routinely inflated sales by orders of magnitude at this point. But it was credited to James Brown and the Famous Flames, not just to the Famous Flames as a group. When they started to be billed that way on stage shows, too, the rest of the band decided that enough was enough, and quit en masse.   Bobby Byrd and Johnny Terry would rejoin fairly shortly afterwards, and both would stay with Brown for many more years, but the rest of the group never came back, and Brown had to put together a new set of Famous Flames, starting out almost from scratch. He had that one hit, which was enough to get his new group gigs, but everything after that flopped, for three long years.   Records like “Chonnie On Chon” tried to jump on various bandwagons — you can hear that there was still a belief among R&B singers that if they namechecked “Annie” from “Work With Me Annie” by the Midnighters, they would have a hit — but despite him singing about having a rock and roll party, the record tanked:   [Excerpt: James Brown, “Chonnie On Chon”]    Brown and his new group of Flames had to build up an audience more or less from nothing. And it’s at this point — when Brown was the undisputed leader of the band — that he started his tactic of insisting on absolute discipline in his bands. Brown took on the title “the hardest working man in showbusiness”, but his band members had to work equally hard, if not harder. Any band member whose shoes weren’t shined, or who missed a dance step, or hit a wrong note on stage, would be fined. Brown took to issuing these fines on stage — he’d point at a band member and then flash five fingers in time to the music. Each time he made his hand flash, that was another five dollar fine for that musician. Audiences would assume it was part of the dance routine, but the musician would know that he was losing that money.   But while Brown’s perfectionism verged on the tyrannical (and indeed sometimes surpassed the tyrannical), it had results.   Brown knew, from a very early age, that he would have to make his success on pure hard work and determination. He didn’t have an especially good voice (though he would always defend himself as a singer — when someone said to him “all you do is grunt”, he’d respond, “Yes, but I grunt *in tune*”). And he wasn’t the physical type that was in fashion with black audiences at the time. While I am *absolutely* not the person to talk about colourism in the black community, there is a general consensus that in that time and place, black people were more likely to admire a black man if he was light-skinned, had features that didn’t fit the stereotype of black people, and was tall and thin. Brown was *very* dark, had extremely African features, and was short and stocky.   So he and his group just had to work harder than everyone else. They spent three years putting out unsuccessful singles and touring the chitlin’ circuit. We’ve mentioned the chitlin’ circuit in passing before, but now is probably the time to explain this in more detail.   The chitlin’ circuit was an informal network of clubs and theatres that stretched across the USA, catering almost exclusively to black audiences. Any black act — with the exception of a handful of acts who were aiming at white audiences, like Harry Belafonte or Nat “King” Cole — would play the chitlin’ circuit, and those audiences would be hard to impress. As with poor audiences everywhere, the audiences wanted value for their entertainment dollar, and were not prepared to tolerate anything less than the best.   The worst of these audiences was at the amateur nights at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. The audiences there would come prepared with baskets full of rotten fruit and eggs to throw at the stage. But all of the audiences would be quick to show their disapproval.   But at the same time, that kind of audience will also, if you give them anything *more* than their money’s worth, be loyal to you forever. And Brown made sure that the Famous Flames would inspire that kind of loyalty, by making sure they worked harder than any other group on the circuit. And after three years of work, he finally had a second hit.   The new song was inspired by “For Your Precious Love” by Jerry Butler, another slow-burn ballad, though this time more obviously in the soul genre:   [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, “For Your Precious Love”]   As Brown told the story, he wrote his new song and took it to Syd Nathan at Federal, who said that he wasn’t going to waste his money putting out anything like that, and that in fact he was dropping Brown from the label. Brown was so convinced it was a hit that he recorded a demo with his own money, and took it directly to the radio stations, where it quickly became the most requested song on the stations that played it.   According to Brown, Nathan wouldn’t budge on putting the song out until he discovered that Federal had received orders for twenty-five thousand copies of the single.   Nathan then asked Brown for the tape, saying he was going to give Brown one more chance. But Brown told Nathan that if he was going to put out the new song, it was going to be done properly, in a studio paid for by Nathan. Nathan reluctantly agreed, and Brown went into the studio and cut “Try Me”:   [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, “Try Me”]   “Try Me” became an even bigger hit than “Please Please Please” had, and went to number one on the R&B charts and number forty-eight on the pop charts.   But once again, Brown lost his group, and this time just before a big residency at the Apollo — the most prestigious, and also the most demanding, venue on the chitlin’ circuit. He still had Johnny Terry, and this was the point when Bobby Byrd rejoined the group after a couple of years away, but he was still worried about his new group and how they would fare on this residency, which also featured Little Richard’s old group the Upsetters, and was headlined by the blues star Little Willie John.   Brown needn’t have worried. The new lineup of Famous Flames went down well enough that the audiences were more impressed by them than by any of the other acts on the bill, and they were soon promoted to co-headline status, much to Little Willie John’s annoyance.   That was the first time James Brown ever played at the Apollo, a venue which in later years would become synonymous with him, and we’ll pick up in later episodes on the ways in which Brown and the Apollo were crucial in building each other’s reputation.   But for Brown himself, probably the most important thing about that residency at the Apollo came at the end of the run. And I’ll finish this episode with Brown’s own words, from his autobiography, talking about that last night:   “The day after we finished at the Apollo I was in my room at the Theresa, fixing to leave for Washington, when somebody knocked on the door.   “Come in,” I said. I was gathering up my belongings, not really watching the door. I heard it open, real slow, but that was all. After a minute, when I realized how quiet it was, I turned around. There was a small woman standing there, not young, not old. I hadn’t seen her since I was four years old, but when I looked at her I knew right away it was my mother.   I had no idea she was coming to see me that day or any day.   “I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” I said. “I’m glad to see you.”   She started to smile, and when she did I could see she’d lost all her teeth.   All I could think to say was, “I’m going to get your mouth fixed for you.”   She didn’t say anything. She just walked toward me. We hugged, and then I kissed my mother for the first time in more than twenty years.”  

    Episode thirty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Please Please Please" by James Brown, and at the early rock and roll career of the Godfather of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Come Go With Me" by the Del Vikings. ----more----  Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.  I relied mostly on two books for this episode. James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, by James Brown with Bruce Tucker, is a celebrity autobiography with all that that entails, but a more interesting read than many.  Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, by James McBride is a more discursive, gonzo journalism piece, and well worth a read. And this two-CD compilation has all Brown's singles from 1956 through 61.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just as the other week we talked about a country musician who had a massive impact on rock and roll, one who was originally marketed as a rock and roller, so today we're going to talk about a funk and soul musician who got his first hits playing to the rock and roll audience.   There is a type of musician we will come across a lot as our story progresses. He is almost always a man, and he is usually regarded as a musical genius. He will be focused only on two things -- his music and his money -- and will have basically no friends, except maybe one from his childhood. He has employees, not friends. And he only hires the best -- his employees do staggering work while being treated appallingly by him, and he takes all the credit while they do most of the work. Yet at the same time, the work those employees do ends up sounding like that genius, and when they go on to do their own stuff without him, it never sounds quite as good. That one percent he's adding does make the difference. He's never really liked as a person by his employees, but he's grudgingly respected, and he's loved by his audience.   There are people like that in every creative field -- one thinks of Stan Lee in comics, or Walt Disney in film -- but there are a *lot* of them in music, and they are responsible for an outsized portion of the most influential music ever made. And James Brown is almost the archetypal example of this kind of musician.   James Brown had a hard, hard childhood. His mother left his father when James was four -- stories say that Brown's father pulled a gun on her, so her wanting to get away seems entirely reasonable, but she left her son with him, and James felt abandoned and betrayed for much of his life. A few years later his father realised that he didn't have the ability to look after a child by himself, and dumped James on a relative he always called an aunt, though she was some form of cousin, to raise. His aunt ran a brothel, and it's safe to say that that was not the best possible environment in which to raise a young child. He later said that he was in his teens before he had any underwear that was bought from a shop rather than made out of old sacks. In later life, when other people would talk about having come from broken homes and having been abandoned by their fathers, he would say "How do you think I feel? My father *and my mother* left me!"   But he had ambition. Young James had entered -- and won -- talent shows from a very young age -- his first one was in 1944, when he was eleven, and he performed "So Long", the song that would a few years later become Ruth Brown's first big hit, but was then best known in a version by the Charioteers:   [Excerpt: The Charioteers, "So Long"]   He loved music, especially jazz and gospel, and he was eager to learn anything he could about it. The one form of music he could never get into was the blues -- his father played a little blues, but it wasn't young James' musical interest at all -- but even there, when Tampa Red started dating one of the sex workers who worked at his aunt's house, young James Brown learned what he could from the blues legend.   He learned to sing from the holiness churches, and his music would always have a gospel flavour to it. But the music he liked more than anything was that style of jazz and swing music that was blending into what was becoming R&B. He loved Count Basie, and used to try to teach himself to play "One O'Clock Jump", Count Basie's biggest hit, on the piano:   [Excerpt: Count Basie, "One O'Clock Jump"]   That style of music wouldn't show up in his earlier records, which were mostly fairly standard vocal group R&B, but if you listen to his much later funk recordings, they owe a *lot* to Basie and Lionel Hampton. The music that Brown became most famous for is the logical conclusion to the style that those musicians developed -- though we'll talk more about the invention of funk, and how funk is a form of jazz, in a future episode. But his real favourite, the one he tried to emulate more than any other, was Louis Jordan. Brown didn't get to see Jordan live as a child, but he would listen to his records on the radio and see him in film shorts, and he decided that more than anything else he wanted to be like Jordan. As soon as he started performing with small groups around town, he started singing Jordan's songs, especially "Caldonia", which years later he would record as a tribute to his idol:   [Excerpt: James Brown, "Caldonia"]   But as you might imagine, life for young James Brown wasn't the easiest, and he eventually fell into robbery. This started when he was disciplined at school for not being dressed appropriately -- so he went out and stole himself some better clothes. He started to do the same for his friends, and then moved on to more serious types of theft, including cars, and he ended up getting caught breaking into one.   At the age of sixteen, Brown was sent to a juvenile detention centre, on a sentence of eight to sixteen years, and this inadvertently led to the biggest piece of luck in his life, when he met the man who would be his mentor and principal creative partner for the next twenty years. There was a baseball game between inmates of the detention centre and a team of outsiders, one of whom was named Bobby Byrd, and Byrd got talking to Brown and discovered that he could sing. In fact Brown had put together a little band in the detention centre, using improvised instruments, and would often play the piano in the gym. He'd got enough of a reputation for being able to play that he'd acquired the nickname "Music Box" -- and Byrd had heard about him even outside the prison.   At the time, Byrd was leading a gospel vocal group, and needed a new singer, and he was impressed enough with Brown that he put in a word for him at a parole hearing and helped him get released early. James Brown was going to devote his life to singing for the Lord, and he wasn't going to sin any more. He got out of the detention centre after serving only three years of his sentence, though you can imagine that to a teen there was not much "only" about spending three years of your life locked up, especially in Georgia in the 1940s, a time and place when the white guards were free to be racially abusive to an even greater extent than they are today. And for the next ten years, throughout his early musical career, Brown would be on parole and in danger of being recalled to prison at any time.   Brown ended up joining Byrd's *sister's* gospel group, at least for a while, before moving over to Byrd's own group, which had originally been a gospel group called the Gospel Starlighters, but by now was an R&B group called the Avons. They soon renamed themselves again, to the Flames, and later to the *Famous* Flames, the name they would stick with from then on (and a name which would cause a lot of confusion, as we've already talked about the Hollywood Flames, who featured a different Bobby Byrd). Brown's friend Johnny Terry, who he had performed with in the detention centre, also joined the group. There would be many lineups of the Famous Flames, but Brown, Byrd, and Terry would be the nucleus of most of them.   Brown was massively influenced by Little Richard, to the extent that he was essentially a Little Richard tribute act early on. Brown felt an immediate kinship with Richard's music because both of them were from Georgia, both were massively influenced by Louis Jordan, and both were inspired by church music. Brown would later go off in his own direction, of course, but in those early years he sounded more like Little Richard than like anyone else.   In fact, around this time, Little Richard's career was doing so well that he could suddenly be booked into much bigger halls than he had been playing. He still had a few months' worth of contracts in those old halls, though, and so his agent had a brainwave. No-one knew what Richard looked like, so the agent got Brown and the Flames to pretend to be Little Richard and the Upsetters and tour playing the gigs that Richard had been booked into. Every night Brown would go out on stage to the introduction, "Please welcome the hardest working man in showbusiness today, Little Richard!", and when he finished ghosting for Little Richard, he liked the introduction enough that he would keep it for himself, changing it only to his own name rather than Richard's. Brown would perform a mixture of Richard's material, his own originals, and the R&B songs that the Flames had been performing around Georgia. They'd already been cutting some records for tiny labels, at least according to Brown's autobiography, mostly cover versions of R&B hits. I haven't been able to track down any of these, but one that Brown mentions in his autobiography is "So Long", which he later rerecorded in 1961, and that version might give you some idea of what Brown sounded like at the period when he was trying to be Little Richard:   [Excerpt: James Brown, "So Long"]   Brown's imitation of Richard went down well enough that Richard's agent, Clint Brantley, decided to get the group to record a demo of themselves doing their own material.   They chose to do a song called "Please, Please, Please", written by Brown and Johnny Terry. The song was based on something that Little Richard had scribbled on a napkin, which Brown decided would make a good title for a song. The song fits neatly into a particular genre of R&B ballad, typified by for example, Richard's "Directly From My Heart to You":   [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Directly From My Heart to You"]   Though both "Directly From My Heart" and "Please Please Please" owe more than a little to "Shake A Hand" by Faye Adams, the song that inspired almost all slow-burn blues ballads in this period:   [Excerpt: Faye Adams, "Shake a Hand"]   However, the real key to the song came when Brown heard the Orioles' version of Big Joe Williams' "Baby Please Don't Go", and used their backing vocal arrangement:   [Excerpt: The Orioles, "Baby Please Don't Go"]   The Famous Flames were patterning themselves more and more on two groups -- Billy Ward and the Dominoes, whose records with Clyde McPhatter as lead singer had paved the way for vocal group R&B as a genre, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, whose "Work With Me Annie" had had, for the time, a blatant sexuality that was unusual in successful records. They were going for energy, and for pure expression of visceral emotion, rather than the smooth sophisticated sounds of the Platters or Penguins.   They were signed to Federal Records, a subsidiary of King, by Ralph Bass, the visionary A&R man we've dealt with in many other episodes. Bass was absolutely convinced that "Please Please Please" would be a hit, and championed the Flames in the face of opposition from his boss, Syd Nathan. Nathan thought that the song just consisted of Brown screaming one word over and over again, and that there was no way on earth that it could be a hit. In Brown's autobiography (not the most reliable of sources) he even claims that Bass was sacked for putting out the record against Nathan's will, but then rehired when the record became a hit. I'm not sure if that's literally true, but it's a story that shows the emotional truth of the period -- Bass was the only person at the record company with any faith in the Famous Flames.   But the song became hugely popular. The emotion in Brown's singing was particularly effective on a particular type of woman, who would feel intensely sorry for Brown, and who would want to make that poor man feel better. Some woman had obviously hurt him terribly, and he needed the right woman to fix his hurt. It was a powerful, heartbreaking, song, and an even more powerful performance:   [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Please Please Please"]   The song would eventually become one of the staples in the group's live repertoire, and they would develop an elaborate routine about it. Brown would drop to his knees, sobbing, and the other band members would drape him in a cape -- something that was inspired by a caped wrestler, Gorgeous George -- and try to lead him off stage, concerned for him. Brown would pull away from them, feigning distress, and try to continue singing the song while his bandmates tried to get him off the stage.   Sometimes it would go even further -- Brown talks in his autobiography about one show, supporting Little Richard, where he climbed into the rafters of the ceiling, hung from the ceiling while singing, and dropped into the waiting arms of the band members at the climax of the show.   But there was trouble in store. The record reached number six on the R&B chart and supposedly sold between one and three million copies, though record companies routinely inflated sales by orders of magnitude at this point. But it was credited to James Brown and the Famous Flames, not just to the Famous Flames as a group. When they started to be billed that way on stage shows, too, the rest of the band decided that enough was enough, and quit en masse.   Bobby Byrd and Johnny Terry would rejoin fairly shortly afterwards, and both would stay with Brown for many more years, but the rest of the group never came back, and Brown had to put together a new set of Famous Flames, starting out almost from scratch. He had that one hit, which was enough to get his new group gigs, but everything after that flopped, for three long years.   Records like "Chonnie On Chon" tried to jump on various bandwagons -- you can hear that there was still a belief among R&B singers that if they namechecked "Annie" from "Work With Me Annie" by the Midnighters, they would have a hit -- but despite him singing about having a rock and roll party, the record tanked:   [Excerpt: James Brown, "Chonnie On Chon"]    Brown and his new group of Flames had to build up an audience more or less from nothing. And it's at this point -- when Brown was the undisputed leader of the band -- that he started his tactic of insisting on absolute discipline in his bands. Brown took on the title "the hardest working man in showbusiness", but his band members had to work equally hard, if not harder. Any band member whose shoes weren't shined, or who missed a dance step, or hit a wrong note on stage, would be fined. Brown took to issuing these fines on stage -- he'd point at a band member and then flash five fingers in time to the music. Each time he made his hand flash, that was another five dollar fine for that musician. Audiences would assume it was part of the dance routine, but the musician would know that he was losing that money.   But while Brown's perfectionism verged on the tyrannical (and indeed sometimes surpassed the tyrannical), it had results.   Brown knew, from a very early age, that he would have to make his success on pure hard work and determination. He didn't have an especially good voice (though he would always defend himself as a singer -- when someone said to him "all you do is grunt", he'd respond, "Yes, but I grunt *in tune*”). And he wasn't the physical type that was in fashion with black audiences at the time. While I am *absolutely* not the person to talk about colourism in the black community, there is a general consensus that in that time and place, black people were more likely to admire a black man if he was light-skinned, had features that didn't fit the stereotype of black people, and was tall and thin. Brown was *very* dark, had extremely African features, and was short and stocky.   So he and his group just had to work harder than everyone else. They spent three years putting out unsuccessful singles and touring the chitlin' circuit. We've mentioned the chitlin' circuit in passing before, but now is probably the time to explain this in more detail.   The chitlin' circuit was an informal network of clubs and theatres that stretched across the USA, catering almost exclusively to black audiences. Any black act -- with the exception of a handful of acts who were aiming at white audiences, like Harry Belafonte or Nat "King" Cole -- would play the chitlin' circuit, and those audiences would be hard to impress. As with poor audiences everywhere, the audiences wanted value for their entertainment dollar, and were not prepared to tolerate anything less than the best.   The worst of these audiences was at the amateur nights at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. The audiences there would come prepared with baskets full of rotten fruit and eggs to throw at the stage. But all of the audiences would be quick to show their disapproval.   But at the same time, that kind of audience will also, if you give them anything *more* than their money's worth, be loyal to you forever. And Brown made sure that the Famous Flames would inspire that kind of loyalty, by making sure they worked harder than any other group on the circuit. And after three years of work, he finally had a second hit.   The new song was inspired by "For Your Precious Love" by Jerry Butler, another slow-burn ballad, though this time more obviously in the soul genre:   [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "For Your Precious Love"]   As Brown told the story, he wrote his new song and took it to Syd Nathan at Federal, who said that he wasn't going to waste his money putting out anything like that, and that in fact he was dropping Brown from the label. Brown was so convinced it was a hit that he recorded a demo with his own money, and took it directly to the radio stations, where it quickly became the most requested song on the stations that played it.   According to Brown, Nathan wouldn't budge on putting the song out until he discovered that Federal had received orders for twenty-five thousand copies of the single.   Nathan then asked Brown for the tape, saying he was going to give Brown one more chance. But Brown told Nathan that if he was going to put out the new song, it was going to be done properly, in a studio paid for by Nathan. Nathan reluctantly agreed, and Brown went into the studio and cut "Try Me":   [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Try Me"]   "Try Me" became an even bigger hit than "Please Please Please" had, and went to number one on the R&B charts and number forty-eight on the pop charts.   But once again, Brown lost his group, and this time just before a big residency at the Apollo -- the most prestigious, and also the most demanding, venue on the chitlin' circuit. He still had Johnny Terry, and this was the point when Bobby Byrd rejoined the group after a couple of years away, but he was still worried about his new group and how they would fare on this residency, which also featured Little Richard's old group the Upsetters, and was headlined by the blues star Little Willie John.   Brown needn't have worried. The new lineup of Famous Flames went down well enough that the audiences were more impressed by them than by any of the other acts on the bill, and they were soon promoted to co-headline status, much to Little Willie John's annoyance.   That was the first time James Brown ever played at the Apollo, a venue which in later years would become synonymous with him, and we'll pick up in later episodes on the ways in which Brown and the Apollo were crucial in building each other's reputation.   But for Brown himself, probably the most important thing about that residency at the Apollo came at the end of the run. And I'll finish this episode with Brown's own words, from his autobiography, talking about that last night:   "The day after we finished at the Apollo I was in my room at the Theresa, fixing to leave for Washington, when somebody knocked on the door.   “Come in,” I said. I was gathering up my belongings, not really watching the door. I heard it open, real slow, but that was all. After a minute, when I realized how quiet it was, I turned around. There was a small woman standing there, not young, not old. I hadn’t seen her since I was four years old, but when I looked at her I knew right away it was my mother.   I had no idea she was coming to see me that day or any day.   “I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” I said. “I’m glad to see you.”   She started to smile, and when she did I could see she’d lost all her teeth.   All I could think to say was, “I’m going to get your mouth fixed for you.”   She didn’t say anything. She just walked toward me. We hugged, and then I kissed my mother for the first time in more than twenty years."  

    Episode thirty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Please Please Please” by James Brown, and at the early rock and roll career of the Godfather of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Come Go With Me” by the Del Vikings. —-more—-  Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode.  I relied mostly on two books for this episode. James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, by James Brown with Bruce Tucker, is a celebrity autobiography with all that that entails, but a more interesting read than many.  Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, by James McBride is a more discursive, gonzo journalism piece, and well worth a read. And this two-CD compilation has all Brown’s singles from 1956 through 61.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just as the other week we talked about a country musician who had a massive impact on rock and roll, one who was originally marketed as a rock and roller, so today we’re going to talk about a funk and soul musician who got his first hits playing to the rock and roll audience.   There is a type of musician we will come across a lot as our story progresses. He is almost always a man, and he is usually regarded as a musical genius. He will be focused only on two things — his music and his money — and will have basically no friends, except maybe one from his childhood. He has employees, not friends. And he only hires the best — his employees do staggering work while being treated appallingly by him, and he takes all the credit while they do most of the work. Yet at the same time, the work those employees do ends up sounding like that genius, and when they go on to do their own stuff without him, it never sounds quite as good. That one percent he’s adding does make the difference. He’s never really liked as a person by his employees, but he’s grudgingly respected, and he’s loved by his audience.   There are people like that in every creative field — one thinks of Stan Lee in comics, or Walt Disney in film — but there are a *lot* of them in music, and they are responsible for an outsized portion of the most influential music ever made. And James Brown is almost the archetypal example of this kind of musician.   James Brown had a hard, hard childhood. His mother left his father when James was four — stories say that Brown’s father pulled a gun on her, so her wanting to get away seems entirely reasonable, but she left her son with him, and James felt abandoned and betrayed for much of his life. A few years later his father realised that he didn’t have the ability to look after a child by himself, and dumped James on a relative he always called an aunt, though she was some form of cousin, to raise. His aunt ran a brothel, and it’s safe to say that that was not the best possible environment in which to raise a young child. He later said that he was in his teens before he had any underwear that was bought from a shop rather than made out of old sacks. In later life, when other people would talk about having come from broken homes and having been abandoned by their fathers, he would say “How do you think I feel? My father *and my mother* left me!”   But he had ambition. Young James had entered — and won — talent shows from a very young age — his first one was in 1944, when he was eleven, and he performed “So Long”, the song that would a few years later become Ruth Brown’s first big hit, but was then best known in a version by the Charioteers:   [Excerpt: The Charioteers, “So Long”]   He loved music, especially jazz and gospel, and he was eager to learn anything he could about it. The one form of music he could never get into was the blues — his father played a little blues, but it wasn’t young James’ musical interest at all — but even there, when Tampa Red started dating one of the sex workers who worked at his aunt’s house, young James Brown learned what he could from the blues legend.   He learned to sing from the holiness churches, and his music would always have a gospel flavour to it. But the music he liked more than anything was that style of jazz and swing music that was blending into what was becoming R&B. He loved Count Basie, and used to try to teach himself to play “One O’Clock Jump”, Count Basie’s biggest hit, on the piano:   [Excerpt: Count Basie, “One O’Clock Jump”]   That style of music wouldn’t show up in his earlier records, which were mostly fairly standard vocal group R&B, but if you listen to his much later funk recordings, they owe a *lot* to Basie and Lionel Hampton. The music that Brown became most famous for is the logical conclusion to the style that those musicians developed — though we’ll talk more about the invention of funk, and how funk is a form of jazz, in a future episode. But his real favourite, the one he tried to emulate more than any other, was Louis Jordan. Brown didn’t get to see Jordan live as a child, but he would listen to his records on the radio and see him in film shorts, and he decided that more than anything else he wanted to be like Jordan. As soon as he started performing with small groups around town, he started singing Jordan’s songs, especially “Caldonia”, which years later he would record as a tribute to his idol:   [Excerpt: James Brown, “Caldonia”]   But as you might imagine, life for young James Brown wasn’t the easiest, and he eventually fell into robbery. This started when he was disciplined at school for not being dressed appropriately — so he went out and stole himself some better clothes. He started to do the same for his friends, and then moved on to more serious types of theft, including cars, and he ended up getting caught breaking into one.   At the age of sixteen, Brown was sent to a juvenile detention centre, on a sentence of eight to sixteen years, and this inadvertently led to the biggest piece of luck in his life, when he met the man who would be his mentor and principal creative partner for the next twenty years. There was a baseball game between inmates of the detention centre and a team of outsiders, one of whom was named Bobby Byrd, and Byrd got talking to Brown and discovered that he could sing. In fact Brown had put together a little band in the detention centre, using improvised instruments, and would often play the piano in the gym. He’d got enough of a reputation for being able to play that he’d acquired the nickname “Music Box” — and Byrd had heard about him even outside the prison.   At the time, Byrd was leading a gospel vocal group, and needed a new singer, and he was impressed enough with Brown that he put in a word for him at a parole hearing and helped him get released early. James Brown was going to devote his life to singing for the Lord, and he wasn’t going to sin any more. He got out of the detention centre after serving only three years of his sentence, though you can imagine that to a teen there was not much “only” about spending three years of your life locked up, especially in Georgia in the 1940s, a time and place when the white guards were free to be racially abusive to an even greater extent than they are today. And for the next ten years, throughout his early musical career, Brown would be on parole and in danger of being recalled to prison at any time.   Brown ended up joining Byrd’s *sister’s* gospel group, at least for a while, before moving over to Byrd’s own group, which had originally been a gospel group called the Gospel Starlighters, but by now was an R&B group called the Avons. They soon renamed themselves again, to the Flames, and later to the *Famous* Flames, the name they would stick with from then on (and a name which would cause a lot of confusion, as we’ve already talked about the Hollywood Flames, who featured a different Bobby Byrd). Brown’s friend Johnny Terry, who he had performed with in the detention centre, also joined the group. There would be many lineups of the Famous Flames, but Brown, Byrd, and Terry would be the nucleus of most of them.   Brown was massively influenced by Little Richard, to the extent that he was essentially a Little Richard tribute act early on. Brown felt an immediate kinship with Richard’s music because both of them were from Georgia, both were massively influenced by Louis Jordan, and both were inspired by church music. Brown would later go off in his own direction, of course, but in those early years he sounded more like Little Richard than like anyone else.   In fact, around this time, Little Richard’s career was doing so well that he could suddenly be booked into much bigger halls than he had been playing. He still had a few months’ worth of contracts in those old halls, though, and so his agent had a brainwave. No-one knew what Richard looked like, so the agent got Brown and the Flames to pretend to be Little Richard and the Upsetters and tour playing the gigs that Richard had been booked into. Every night Brown would go out on stage to the introduction, “Please welcome the hardest working man in showbusiness today, Little Richard!”, and when he finished ghosting for Little Richard, he liked the introduction enough that he would keep it for himself, changing it only to his own name rather than Richard’s. Brown would perform a mixture of Richard’s material, his own originals, and the R&B songs that the Flames had been performing around Georgia. They’d already been cutting some records for tiny labels, at least according to Brown’s autobiography, mostly cover versions of R&B hits. I haven’t been able to track down any of these, but one that Brown mentions in his autobiography is “So Long”, which he later rerecorded in 1961, and that version might give you some idea of what Brown sounded like at the period when he was trying to be Little Richard:   [Excerpt: James Brown, “So Long”]   Brown’s imitation of Richard went down well enough that Richard’s agent, Clint Brantley, decided to get the group to record a demo of themselves doing their own material.   They chose to do a song called “Please, Please, Please”, written by Brown and Johnny Terry. The song was based on something that Little Richard had scribbled on a napkin, which Brown decided would make a good title for a song. The song fits neatly into a particular genre of R&B ballad, typified by for example, Richard’s “Directly From My Heart to You”:   [Excerpt: Little Richard, “Directly From My Heart to You”]   Though both “Directly From My Heart” and “Please Please Please” owe more than a little to “Shake A Hand” by Faye Adams, the song that inspired almost all slow-burn blues ballads in this period:   [Excerpt: Faye Adams, “Shake a Hand”]   However, the real key to the song came when Brown heard the Orioles’ version of Big Joe Williams’ “Baby Please Don’t Go”, and used their backing vocal arrangement:   [Excerpt: The Orioles, “Baby Please Don’t Go”]   The Famous Flames were patterning themselves more and more on two groups — Billy Ward and the Dominoes, whose records with Clyde McPhatter as lead singer had paved the way for vocal group R&B as a genre, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, whose “Work With Me Annie” had had, for the time, a blatant sexuality that was unusual in successful records. They were going for energy, and for pure expression of visceral emotion, rather than the smooth sophisticated sounds of the Platters or Penguins.   They were signed to Federal Records, a subsidiary of King, by Ralph Bass, the visionary A&R man we’ve dealt with in many other episodes. Bass was absolutely convinced that “Please Please Please” would be a hit, and championed the Flames in the face of opposition from his boss, Syd Nathan. Nathan thought that the song just consisted of Brown screaming one word over and over again, and that there was no way on earth that it could be a hit. In Brown’s autobiography (not the most reliable of sources) he even claims that Bass was sacked for putting out the record against Nathan’s will, but then rehired when the record became a hit. I’m not sure if that’s literally true, but it’s a story that shows the emotional truth of the period — Bass was the only person at the record company with any faith in the Famous Flames.   But the song became hugely popular. The emotion in Brown’s singing was particularly effective on a particular type of woman, who would feel intensely sorry for Brown, and who would want to make that poor man feel better. Some woman had obviously hurt him terribly, and he needed the right woman to fix his hurt. It was a powerful, heartbreaking, song, and an even more powerful performance:   [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, “Please Please Please”]   The song would eventually become one of the staples in the group’s live repertoire, and they would develop an elaborate routine about it. Brown would drop to his knees, sobbing, and the other band members would drape him in a cape — something that was inspired by a caped wrestler, Gorgeous George — and try to lead him off stage, concerned for him. Brown would pull away from them, feigning distress, and try to continue singing the song while his bandmates tried to get him off the stage.   Sometimes it would go even further — Brown talks in his autobiography about one show, supporting Little Richard, where he climbed into the rafters of the ceiling, hung from the ceiling while singing, and dropped into the waiting arms of the band members at the climax of the show.   But there was trouble in store. The record reached number six on the R&B chart and supposedly sold between one and three million copies, though record companies routinely inflated sales by orders of magnitude at this point. But it was credited to James Brown and the Famous Flames, not just to the Famous Flames as a group. When they started to be billed that way on stage shows, too, the rest of the band decided that enough was enough, and quit en masse.   Bobby Byrd and Johnny Terry would rejoin fairly shortly afterwards, and both would stay with Brown for many more years, but the rest of the group never came back, and Brown had to put together a new set of Famous Flames, starting out almost from scratch. He had that one hit, which was enough to get his new group gigs, but everything after that flopped, for three long years.   Records like “Chonnie On Chon” tried to jump on various bandwagons — you can hear that there was still a belief among R&B singers that if they namechecked “Annie” from “Work With Me Annie” by the Midnighters, they would have a hit — but despite him singing about having a rock and roll party, the record tanked:   [Excerpt: James Brown, “Chonnie On Chon”]    Brown and his new group of Flames had to build up an audience more or less from nothing. And it’s at this point — when Brown was the undisputed leader of the band — that he started his tactic of insisting on absolute discipline in his bands. Brown took on the title “the hardest working man in showbusiness”, but his band members had to work equally hard, if not harder. Any band member whose shoes weren’t shined, or who missed a dance step, or hit a wrong note on stage, would be fined. Brown took to issuing these fines on stage — he’d point at a band member and then flash five fingers in time to the music. Each time he made his hand flash, that was another five dollar fine for that musician. Audiences would assume it was part of the dance routine, but the musician would know that he was losing that money.   But while Brown’s perfectionism verged on the tyrannical (and indeed sometimes surpassed the tyrannical), it had results.   Brown knew, from a very early age, that he would have to make his success on pure hard work and determination. He didn’t have an especially good voice (though he would always defend himself as a singer — when someone said to him “all you do is grunt”, he’d respond, “Yes, but I grunt *in tune*”). And he wasn’t the physical type that was in fashion with black audiences at the time. While I am *absolutely* not the person to talk about colourism in the black community, there is a general consensus that in that time and place, black people were more likely to admire a black man if he was light-skinned, had features that didn’t fit the stereotype of black people, and was tall and thin. Brown was *very* dark, had extremely African features, and was short and stocky.   So he and his group just had to work harder than everyone else. They spent three years putting out unsuccessful singles and touring the chitlin’ circuit. We’ve mentioned the chitlin’ circuit in passing before, but now is probably the time to explain this in more detail.   The chitlin’ circuit was an informal network of clubs and theatres that stretched across the USA, catering almost exclusively to black audiences. Any black act — with the exception of a handful of acts who were aiming at white audiences, like Harry Belafonte or Nat “King” Cole — would play the chitlin’ circuit, and those audiences would be hard to impress. As with poor audiences everywhere, the audiences wanted value for their entertainment dollar, and were not prepared to tolerate anything less than the best.   The worst of these audiences was at the amateur nights at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. The audiences there would come prepared with baskets full of rotten fruit and eggs to throw at the stage. But all of the audiences would be quick to show their disapproval.   But at the same time, that kind of audience will also, if you give them anything *more* than their money’s worth, be loyal to you forever. And Brown made sure that the Famous Flames would inspire that kind of loyalty, by making sure they worked harder than any other group on the circuit. And after three years of work, he finally had a second hit.   The new song was inspired by “For Your Precious Love” by Jerry Butler, another slow-burn ballad, though this time more obviously in the soul genre:   [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, “For Your Precious Love”]   As Brown told the story, he wrote his new song and took it to Syd Nathan at Federal, who said that he wasn’t going to waste his money putting out anything like that, and that in fact he was dropping Brown from the label. Brown was so convinced it was a hit that he recorded a demo with his own money, and took it directly to the radio stations, where it quickly became the most requested song on the stations that played it.   According to Brown, Nathan wouldn’t budge on putting the song out until he discovered that Federal had received orders for twenty-five thousand copies of the single.   Nathan then asked Brown for the tape, saying he was going to give Brown one more chance. But Brown told Nathan that if he was going to put out the new song, it was going to be done properly, in a studio paid for by Nathan. Nathan reluctantly agreed, and Brown went into the studio and cut “Try Me”:   [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, “Try Me”]   “Try Me” became an even bigger hit than “Please Please Please” had, and went to number one on the R&B charts and number forty-eight on the pop charts.   But once again, Brown lost his group, and this time just before a big residency at the Apollo — the most prestigious, and also the most demanding, venue on the chitlin’ circuit. He still had Johnny Terry, and this was the point when Bobby Byrd rejoined the group after a couple of years away, but he was still worried about his new group and how they would fare on this residency, which also featured Little Richard’s old group the Upsetters, and was headlined by the blues star Little Willie John.   Brown needn’t have worried. The new lineup of Famous Flames went down well enough that the audiences were more impressed by them than by any of the other acts on the bill, and they were soon promoted to co-headline status, much to Little Willie John’s annoyance.   That was the first time James Brown ever played at the Apollo, a venue which in later years would become synonymous with him, and we’ll pick up in later episodes on the ways in which Brown and the Apollo were crucial in building each other’s reputation.   But for Brown himself, probably the most important thing about that residency at the Apollo came at the end of the run. And I’ll finish this episode with Brown’s own words, from his autobiography, talking about that last night:   “The day after we finished at the Apollo I was in my room at the Theresa, fixing to leave for Washington, when somebody knocked on the door.   “Come in,” I said. I was gathering up my belongings, not really watching the door. I heard it open, real slow, but that was all. After a minute, when I realized how quiet it was, I turned around. There was a small woman standing there, not young, not old. I hadn’t seen her since I was four years old, but when I looked at her I knew right away it was my mother.   I had no idea she was coming to see me that day or any day.   “I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” I said. “I’m glad to see you.”   She started to smile, and when she did I could see she’d lost all her teeth.   All I could think to say was, “I’m going to get your mouth fixed for you.”   She didn’t say anything. She just walked toward me. We hugged, and then I kissed my mother for the first time in more than twenty years.”  

Album van de Week is Todd Snider - Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. Verder muziek van Junior Wells, Tampa Red, Daniël Lohues, War, Albinia Jones en Floyd Dixon. De Soul Balad is deze week van Otis Redding

Album van de Week is Todd Snider - Cash Cabin Sessions, Vol. 3. Verder muziek van Junior Wells, Tampa Red, Daniël Lohues, War, Albinia Jones en Floyd Dixon. De Soul Balad is deze week van Otis Redding

Hokum begrebet findes både i jazz’en & blues’en, og det er en fed blanding af comedy, vaudeville og burlesque med kraftige sexuelle undertoner, fortæller Radio Jazz studievært Kay Seitmayer. Hokum Blues’en var meget populær i 1930’nes USA. Kay Seitzmayer fortæller historien og spiller musik, som er med navne som Dallas String Band, Butterbeans & Susie, Tampa Red’s Hokum Jug Band, Yazoo All Stars og Frankie Jaxon m.fl. Sendt i Radio Jazz i 2007 Der er mere jazz på www.radiojazz.dk

420 Louis

How are animals used as metaphor? What might a monkey represent? Explore these questions in Tampa Red's "She Want to Sell My Monkey."

In Hubert's Kerstshow onder meer recent werk van Rodney Crowell en JD McPherson, stokoude kerstblues van Tampa Red en Eric Clapton én Limburgs Kerstleed van Arno Adams en Ivo Rosbeek.

    Welcome to episode five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at Sister Rosetta Tharpe and “This Train” —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of Rosetta Tharpe’s music is now in the public domain, so there are a lot of compilations available. This one, at three CDs for four pounds, is probably the one to get. Almost all the information about Rosetta Tharpe’s life in this episode comes from Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald,  For more on Thomas Dorsey, check out The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church by Michael W. Harris. The Spirituals to Swing concerts are currently out of print, and the recording quality is poor enough it’s really not worth paying the silly money the CDs go for second hand. But if you want to do that, you can find them here. And Rosetta Tharpe’s performance at Wilbraham Road Railway Station can be found on The American Folk Blues Festival: The British Tours 1963-1966 Transcript One of the problems when dealing with the history of rock and roll, as we touched upon the other week in the brief disclaimer episode, is the way it’s dominated by men. Indeed, the story of rock and roll is the story of men crowding out women, and white men crowding out black men, and finally of rich white men crowding out poorer white men, until it eventually becomes a dull, conservative genre. Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when I get to the nineties.   But one black woman is as responsible as anyone for the style of rock and roll, and in particular, for its focus on the guitar.   To find out why, we’re going to be making our final trip back to 1938 and Carnegie Hall.   We’ve talked in earlier episodes about John Hammond’s legendary Spirituals to Swing concerts, and at the time I said that I’d talk some more about the ways in which they were important, but also about how they were problematic. (I know that’s a word that gets overused these days, but I mean it literally — they had problems, but weren’t all bad. Far from it).   One of the most problematic aspects of them, indeed, is encoded in the name. “From Spirituals to Swing”. It gives you a nice, simple, linear narrative — one that was still being pushed in books I read in the 1980s. You start with the spirituals and you end with swing. It’s like those diagrams of the evolution of man, with the crawling monkey on one side and the tall, oddly hairless, white man with his genitals carefully concealed on the other.   The fact is, most of the narrative about “primitive” music — a narrative that was put forward by very progressive white men like John Hammond or the Lomaxes — is deeply mistaken. The forms of music made largely by black people could sound less sophisticated in the 1930s, but that wasn’t because they were atavistic survivals of more primitive forms, musical coelacanths dredged up from the depths to parade. It was because the people making the music often couldn’t afford expensive instruments, and were recorded on cheaper equipment, and all the other myriad ways society makes the lives of black people, and underprivileged people in other ways, just that bit more difficult.   But this was, nonetheless, the narrative that was current in the 1930s. And so the Spirituals to Swing concerts featured a bisexual black woman who basically invented much of what would become rock guitar, an innovator if ever there was one, but portrayed her as somehow less sophisticated than the big band music on the same bill. And they did that because that innovative black woman was playing religious music.   In fact, black gospel music had grown up around the same time as the big bands. Black people had, of course, been singing in churches since their ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity, but gospel music as we talk about it now was largely the creation of one man — Thomas Dorsey.   (This is not the same man as the white bandleader Tommy Dorsey who we’ve mentioned a couple of times earlier).   Dorsey was a blues and jazz musician, who had led the band for Ma Rainey, one of the great early blues singers, and under the name “Georgia Tom” he’d collaborated with Tampa Red on a series of singles. Their song “It’s Tight Like That”, from 1928, is one of the earliest hokum records, and is largely responsible for a lot of the cliches of the form — and it sold seven million copies.   [excerpt of “It’s Tight Like That”]   That record, in itself, is one of the most important records that has ever been made — you can trace from that song, through hokum blues, through R&B, and find its influence in basically every record made by a black American, or by anyone who’s ever listened to a record made by a black American, since then. If Dorsey had only made that one record, he would have been one of the most important figures in music history.   But some time around 1930, he also started writing a whole new style of music. It combined the themes, and some of the melody, of traditional Christian hymns, with the feel of the blues and jazz music he’d been playing. It’s rare that you can talk about a single person inventing a whole field of music, but gospel music as we know it basically *was* invented by Thomas Dorsey.    Other people had performed gospel music before, of course, but the style was very different from anything we now think of as gospel. Dorsey was the one who pulled all the popular music idioms into it and made it into something that powered and inspired all the popular music since.   He did this because he was so torn between his faith and his work as a blues musician that he had multiple breakdowns — at one point finding himself on stage with Ma Rainey and completely unable to move his fingers to play the piano. While he continued parallel careers for a while, eventually he settled on making religious music. And the songs he wrote include some of the most well-known songs of all time, like “Peace in the Valley” and “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”.   That’s a song he wrote in 1932, after his wife died in childbirth and his newborn son died a couple of days later. He was feeling a grief that most of us could never imagine, a pain that must have been more unbearable than anything anyone should have to suffer, and the pain came out in beauty like this:   [excerpt of Rosetta Tharpe singing “Take My Hand, Precious Lord”]   That’s not “primitive” music. That’s not music that is unsophisticated. That’s not some form of folk art. That’s one man, a man who personally revolutionised music multiple times over, writing about his own personal grief and creating something that stands as great art without having to be patronised or given special consideration.   And the person singing on that recording is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who, like Dorsey, is someone who doesn’t need to be given special treatment or be thought of as good considering her disadvantages or any of that patronising nonsense. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of the great singers of her generation, and one of the great guitar players of all time. And she was making music that was as modern and cutting-edge as anything else made in the 1930s and 40s. She wasn’t making music that was a remnant of something that would evolve into swing, no matter what John Hammond thought, she was making important music, and music that would in the long run be seen as far more important than most of the swing bands.   Obviously, one should not judge Hammond too harshly. He was from another time. A primitive.   Sister Rosetta was brought up in, and spent her life singing for, the Church of God in Christ. As many of my listeners are in Europe, as I am myself, it’s probably worth explaining what this church is, because while it does have branches outside the US, that’s where it’s based, and that’s where most of its membership is.   The Church of God in Christ is a Pentecostal church, and it’s the largest Pentacostal church in the US, and the fifth-largest church full stop. I mention that it’s a Pentacostal church, because that’s something you need to understand to understand Rosetta Tharpe. Pentacostals believe in something slightly different to what most other Christian denominations believe.    Before I go any further, I should point out that I am *not* an expert in theology by any means, and that what I’m going to say may well be a mischaracterisation. If you’re a Pentacostal and disagree with my characterisation of your religion here, I apologise, and if you let me know I’ll at least update the show notes. No disrespect is intended.   While most Christians believe that humanity is always tainted by original sin, Pentacostals believe that it is possible for some people, if they truly believe — if they’re “born again” to use a term that’s a little more widespread than just Pentacostalism — to become truly holy. Those people will have all their past sins forgiven, and will then be sinless on Earth. To do this, you have to be “baptised in the Holy Ghost”. This is different from normal baptism, what Pentacostals call “water baptism” — though most Pentacostals think you should be water baptised anyway, as a precursor to the main event. Rather, this is the Holy Spirit descending from Heaven and entering you, filling you with joy and a sense of sanctity. This can often cause speaking in tongues and other strange behaviours, as people are enthused (a word which, in the original Greek, actually meant a god entering into you), and once this has happened you have the tendency to sin removed from you altogether.    This is all based on the Acts of the Apostles, specifically Acts 2:4, which describes how at the Pentecost (which is the seventh Sunday after Easter), “All were filled with the Holy Spirit. They began to express themselves in foreign tongues and make bold proclamation as the Spirit prompted them”.   Unlike many Protestant denominations, which adhere to Calvinist beliefs that nobody can know if they’re going to Heaven or Hell, and that only God can ever know this, and that nothing you do can make a difference to your chances, most Pentacostals believe that you can definitely tell whether you’re going to Heaven. You’re going to Heaven once you’re sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and that’s an end of it.   At least, it’s an end of it so long as you continue with what’s called “outward holiness”, and so you have to dress conservatively, to avoid swearing, to avoid drinking or gambling or smoking, or dancing suggestively, or wearing makeup. If you do that, once the spirit’s entered into you, you’re going to remain holy and free from temptation. If you don’t do that, well, then the Devil might get you after all.   This is a very real fear for many Pentacostals, who have a belief in a literal heaven and hell. And it’s a fear that has inspired a *lot* of the most important musicians in rock and roll. But Pentacostalism isn’t just about fear and living right, it’s also about that feeling of elation and exhiliration when the holy spirit enters you. And music helps bring that feeling about.    It’s no surprise that a lot of the early rock and rollers went to Pentacostal churches — at many of them, especially in the South of the US, there’s a culture of absolutely wild, unrestrained, passionate music and dancing, to get people into the mood to have the spirit enter them. And Sister Rosetta Tharpe is probably the greatest performer to come out of those churches.   But while most of the performers we’ll be looking at started playing secular music, Sister Rosetta never did, or at least very rarely. But she was, nonetheless, an example of something that we’ll see a lot in the history of rock — the pull between the spiritual and the worldly.    From the very start of her career, Sister Rosetta was slightly different from the other gospel performers. While she lived in Chicago at the same time as Thomas Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson, she isn’t generally considered part of the gospel scene that they were at the centre of — because she was travelling round the country playing at revival meetings, rather than staying in one place. When her first marriage — to a fellow evangelist, who apparently abused her — broke up, she moved on to New York, and there she started playing to audiences that were very different from the churches she was used to.   Where people like Mahalia were playing church music for church people, Rosetta Tharpe was taking the gospel to the sinners. Throughout her career, she played in nightclubs and theatres, playing for any audience that would have her, and playing music that got them excited and dancing, even as she was singing about holiness.   She started playing the Cotton Club in 1938. The Cotton Club was the most famous club in New York, though in 1938 it was on its last days of relevance. It had been located in Harlem until 1936, but after riots in Harlem, it had moved to a more respectable area, and was now on Broadway.   In the twenties and early thirties, the Cotton Club had been responsible for the success of both Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, though only Calloway was still playing there regularly by the time Rosetta Tharpe started performing there. It was still, though, the place to be seen — at least if you were white. The Cotton Club was strictly segregated — only black people on stage, but only white people in the audience. The black performers were there to be leered at, in the case of the showgirls, or to play up to black stereotypes. Even Duke Ellington, possibly the most sophisticated musician ever to come out of the United States, had been presented as a “jungle musician”. The name itself — the Cotton Club — was trading on associations with slavery and cotton picking, and the feel of the new venue could probably be summed up by the fact that it had, on its walls, pictures of famous white bandleaders in blackface.   So it’s not surprising that the performances that Sister Rosetta did at the Cotton Club were very different from the ones she’d been doing when she was travelling the country with her mother performing to church crowds. She was still playing the same music, of course — in fact, over her career, she mostly stuck to the same quite small repertoire, rerecording the same material in new arrangements and with new emphases as she grew as an artist — but now she was doing it as part of a parody of the very kind of church service she had grown up in and devoted her life to, with dancers pretending to be “Holy Rollers”, mocking her religion even as her music itself was still devoted to it.   Originally, she was only taken on at the Cotton Club as a sort of trial, on a two-week engagement — and apparently she thought the manager was joking when she was offered five hundred dollars a week, not believing she could be making that much money — and her role was simply to be one of many acts who’d come on and do a song or two between the bigger acts who were given star billing. But she soon became a hit, and she soon got signed to Decca to make records.   Her first record was, of course, a song by Thomas Dorsey, originally titled “Hide Me in Thy Bosom” but given the newer title “Rock Me” by Tharpe. Her arrangement largely stuck to Dorsey’s original, with one important exception — where he had written “singing”, Tharpe sang “swinging”.   [excerpt of “Rock Me”]   Many people also claimed to hear a double entendre in the lyrics to “Rock Me”, and to think the song was about more worldly matters than Dorsey had intended. Whether Tharpe thought that or not, it almost certainly factored into the decision to make it her first single.   When she was booked to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts, she performed both that song and “That’s All”, backed by Albert Ammons, one of the boogie woogie players who also appeared on the bill, and in the recording of that we can hear, rather better than in the studio recording, the raw power of Tharpe’s performance.   [excerpt of “That’s All” from Carnegie Hall]   The sound quality of these recordings isn’t great, of course, but you can clearly hear the enthusiasm in that performance.   Tharpe’s performances at the Cotton Club drew a great deal of attention, and Time magazine even did a feature on her, and how she “Swings Same Songs in Church and Night Club.” When the Cotton Club shut down she moved on to the Cafe Society, a venue booked by John Hammond, which was an integrated club and which fit her rather better.   While she was working there, she came to the attention of Lucky Millinder, the big band leader. Different people have different ideas as to how the two started working together — Mo Gale, Millinder’s manager, was also Chick Webb’s manager, and claimed that it was his idea and that he’d seen Tharpe as being an Ella Fitzgerald to Millinder’s Chick Webb, but Bill Doggett, the piano player with Millinder’s band, said that it was Millinder’s idea, not Gale’s, to get Tharpe on board.   Either way, the combination worked well enough at first, as Tharpe got to sing the same songs she’d been performing earlier — her gospel repertoire — but with a big band backing her. She’d also switched to playing an electric guitar rather than an acoustic, and the effect on her guitar playing was extraordinary — where before she’d had to be a busy accompanist, constantly playing new notes due to the lack of sustain from an acoustic guitar, now she was able to play single-note lead lines and rely on the orchestra to provide the chordal pad.   Her remake of “Rock Me” with Millinder’s band, from 1941, shows just how much her artistry had improved in just three years:   [excerpt of 1941 “Rock Me”]   With that record, she more or less invented the guitar style that T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and others would adapt for themselves. That’s just how you play electric blues now, but it wasn’t how anyone played before Rosetta Tharpe.   Soon after she joined Millinder’s band they moved to a residency at the Savoy Ballroom, and became one of the most popular bands for dancers in New York — regulars there included a young man known as Detroit Red, who later changed his name to Malcolm X.  The Savoy Ballroom was closed down not long after — allegedly for prostitution, but more likely because it allowed white women to dance with black men, and the city of New York wouldn’t allow that — although as Malcolm X said, it wasn’t as if they were dragging the white women in there.   However, Millinder’s band was an odd fit for Rosetta Tharpe, and she was increasingly forced to sing secular numbers along with the gospel music she loved. There were plenty of good things about the band, of course — she became lifelong friends with its young trumpet player, Dizzy Gillespie, for example, and she enjoyed a tour where they were on the same bill as a young vocal group, The Four Ink Spots, but she was a little bit uncomfortable singing songs like “Tall Skinny Papa”, which wasn’t particularly gospel-like   [excerpt “Tall Skinny Papa”]   And it’s not particularly likely that she was keen on the follow-up, although she didn’t sing on that one.   [excerpt “Big Fat Mama”]   So eventually, she quit the Millinder band, without giving notice, and went back to performing entirely solo, at least at first.    This was in the middle of the musicians’ union strike, but when that ended, Tharpe was back in the studio, and in September 1944 she began one of the two most important musical collaborations of her career, when she recorded “Strange Things Happening Every Day”, with Sam Price on piano.   Sam Price did *not* get along with Tharpe. He insisted on her playing with a capo, because she was playing in an open tuning and wasn’t playing in a normal jazz key. He didn’t like the idea of combining gospel music with his boogie woogie style (eventually he was persuaded by Tharpe’s mother, a gospel star in her own right who was by all accounts a fearsome and intimidating presence, that this was OK), and when the result became a massive hit, he resented that he got a flat fee.   But nonetheless, “Strange Things Happening Every Day” marks out the start of yet another new style for Tharpe — and it’s yet another song often credited as “the first rock and roll record”.   [Excerpt “Strange Things Happening Every Day”]   Shortly after this, Tharpe started working with another gospel singer, Marie Knight. Her partnership with Marie Knight may have been a partnership in more than one sense. Knight denied the relationship to the end of her days — and it’s entirely understandable that she would, given that she was a gospel singer who was devoted to a particularly conservative church, and whose career also depended on that church — but their relationship was regarded as an open secret within the gospel music community, which had a rather more relaxed attitude to homosexuality and bisexuality than the rest of the church. Some of Tharpe’s friends have described her as a secret lesbian, but given her multiple marriages to men it seems more likely that she was bi — although of course we will never know for sure.   Either way, Tharpe and Knight were a successful double act for many years, with their voices combining perfectly to provide a gospel vocal sound that was unlike anything ever recorded. They stopped working together in 1950, but remained close enough that Knight was in charge of Tharpe’s funeral in 1973,   The two of them toured together — and Tharpe toured later on her own — in their own bus, which was driven by a white man. This gave them a number of advantages in a deeply segregated and racist country. It was considered acceptable for them to go into some public places where they otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed, because they were with a white man — if a black woman was with a white man, it was just assumed that she was sleeping with him, and unlike a white woman sleeping with a black man, this was considered absolutely acceptable, a sexual double-standard that dated back to slavery. If they needed food and the restaurant in a town was whites-only, they could send the white driver in to get them takeout. And if it came to it, if there was no hotel in town that would take black people, they could sleep on the bus.   And segregation was so accepted at the time by so many people that even when Tharpe toured with a white vocal group, the Jordanaires (who would later find more fame backing up some country singer named Elvis something) they just thought her having her own bus was cool, and didn’t even make the connection to how necessary it was for her.   While Tharpe and Knight made many great records together, probably Tharpe’s most important recording was a solo B-side to one of their singles, a 1947 remake of a song she’d first recorded in 1938, “This Train”, again featuring Sam Price on piano:   [excerpt “This Train”]   That’s a song that sets out the theology of the Pentacostal church as well as you’ll ever hear it. This train is a *clean* train. You want to ride it you better get redeemed. No tobacco chewers or cigar smokers. No crap shooters. If you want to be bound for glory, you need to act holy.   There was no-one bigger than Tharpe in her genre. She is probably the first person to ever play rock and roll guitar in stadiums — and not only that, she played rock and roll guitar in a stadium *at her wedding* — her third wedding, to be precise, which took place at Griffith Stadium, the home of the Washington Senators and the Homestead Grays. Twenty thousand people came to see her get married and perform a gospel show afterwards, concluding with fireworks that first exploded in the shape of Tharpe playing her guitar before taking on other shapes like two hearts pierced with Cupid’s arrow. Even Tharpe’s half-sister had to pay for her ticket to the show. Apparently Tharpe signed the contract for her wedding seven months earlier, and then went out to find herself a husband.   Rosetta Tharpe’s popularity started to wane in the 1950s, at least in her home country, but she retained a following in Europe. There’s fascinating footage of her in 1964 filmed by Granada TV, playing at the abandoned Wilbraham Road railway station in Manchester. If you live in Manchester, as I do, that piece of track, which is now part of the Fallowfield cycle loop was the place where some of the greats of black American music were filmed for what may have been the greatest blues TV programme of all time — along with Tharpe, there was Muddy Waters, Otis Span, Reverend Gary Davis, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, all performing in the open air in Manchester in front of an extremely earnest audience of young white British people. Fittingly for an open-air show in Manchester, Tharpe opened her short set with “Didn’t It Rain”   [Didn’t It Rain TV performance excerpt]   By that time, Tharpe had become primarily known as a blues musician, even though she was still doing the same thing she’d always been doing, simply because music had moved on and recategorised her. But she’d had an influence on blues, R&B, and rock and roll music that most people didn’t even realise. “This Train” was not written by Tharpe, exactly — it dates back to the 1920s — but it was definitely her version, and her rewrite, that inspired one of the most important blues records of all time:   [Excerpt of “My Babe”]   Indeed, only a few months after Rosetta Tharpe’s UK performances, Gerry and the Pacemakers, one of the biggest bands of the new Merseybeat sound, who’d had three number one records that year in the UK, were recording their own version of “My Babe”. Gerry and the Pacemakers were, in most respects, as far as you could imagine from gospel music, and yet the connection is there, closer than you’d think.   Rosetta Tharpe died in 1973, and never really got the recognition she deserved. She was only inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame last year. But if you’ve ever liked rock guitar, you’ve got her to thank. Shout, Sister, Shout!   Patreon As always, this podcast only exists because of the donations of my backers on Patreon. If you enjoy it, why not join them?

    Welcome to episode five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at Sister Rosetta Tharpe and "This Train" ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Most of Rosetta Tharpe's music is now in the public domain, so there are a lot of compilations available. This one, at three CDs for four pounds, is probably the one to get. Almost all the information about Rosetta Tharpe's life in this episode comes from Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F Wald,  For more on Thomas Dorsey, check out The Rise of Gospel Blues: The Music of Thomas Andrew Dorsey in the Urban Church by Michael W. Harris. The Spirituals to Swing concerts are currently out of print, and the recording quality is poor enough it's really not worth paying the silly money the CDs go for second hand. But if you want to do that, you can find them here. And Rosetta Tharpe's performance at Wilbraham Road Railway Station can be found on The American Folk Blues Festival: The British Tours 1963-1966 Transcript One of the problems when dealing with the history of rock and roll, as we touched upon the other week in the brief disclaimer episode, is the way it's dominated by men. Indeed, the story of rock and roll is the story of men crowding out women, and white men crowding out black men, and finally of rich white men crowding out poorer white men, until it eventually becomes a dull, conservative genre. Sorry if that's a spoiler, but don't say I didn't warn you when I get to the nineties.   But one black woman is as responsible as anyone for the style of rock and roll, and in particular, for its focus on the guitar.   To find out why, we're going to be making our final trip back to 1938 and Carnegie Hall.   We've talked in earlier episodes about John Hammond's legendary Spirituals to Swing concerts, and at the time I said that I'd talk some more about the ways in which they were important, but also about how they were problematic. (I know that's a word that gets overused these days, but I mean it literally -- they had problems, but weren't all bad. Far from it).   One of the most problematic aspects of them, indeed, is encoded in the name. "From Spirituals to Swing". It gives you a nice, simple, linear narrative -- one that was still being pushed in books I read in the 1980s. You start with the spirituals and you end with swing. It's like those diagrams of the evolution of man, with the crawling monkey on one side and the tall, oddly hairless, white man with his genitals carefully concealed on the other.   The fact is, most of the narrative about "primitive" music -- a narrative that was put forward by very progressive white men like John Hammond or the Lomaxes -- is deeply mistaken. The forms of music made largely by black people could sound less sophisticated in the 1930s, but that wasn't because they were atavistic survivals of more primitive forms, musical coelacanths dredged up from the depths to parade. It was because the people making the music often couldn't afford expensive instruments, and were recorded on cheaper equipment, and all the other myriad ways society makes the lives of black people, and underprivileged people in other ways, just that bit more difficult.   But this was, nonetheless, the narrative that was current in the 1930s. And so the Spirituals to Swing concerts featured a bisexual black woman who basically invented much of what would become rock guitar, an innovator if ever there was one, but portrayed her as somehow less sophisticated than the big band music on the same bill. And they did that because that innovative black woman was playing religious music.   In fact, black gospel music had grown up around the same time as the big bands. Black people had, of course, been singing in churches since their ancestors were forcibly converted to Christianity, but gospel music as we talk about it now was largely the creation of one man -- Thomas Dorsey.   (This is not the same man as the white bandleader Tommy Dorsey who we've mentioned a couple of times earlier).   Dorsey was a blues and jazz musician, who had led the band for Ma Rainey, one of the great early blues singers, and under the name "Georgia Tom" he'd collaborated with Tampa Red on a series of singles. Their song "It's Tight Like That", from 1928, is one of the earliest hokum records, and is largely responsible for a lot of the cliches of the form -- and it sold seven million copies.   [excerpt of "It's Tight Like That"]   That record, in itself, is one of the most important records that has ever been made -- you can trace from that song, through hokum blues, through R&B, and find its influence in basically every record made by a black American, or by anyone who's ever listened to a record made by a black American, since then. If Dorsey had only made that one record, he would have been one of the most important figures in music history.   But some time around 1930, he also started writing a whole new style of music. It combined the themes, and some of the melody, of traditional Christian hymns, with the feel of the blues and jazz music he'd been playing. It's rare that you can talk about a single person inventing a whole field of music, but gospel music as we know it basically *was* invented by Thomas Dorsey.    Other people had performed gospel music before, of course, but the style was very different from anything we now think of as gospel. Dorsey was the one who pulled all the popular music idioms into it and made it into something that powered and inspired all the popular music since.   He did this because he was so torn between his faith and his work as a blues musician that he had multiple breakdowns -- at one point finding himself on stage with Ma Rainey and completely unable to move his fingers to play the piano. While he continued parallel careers for a while, eventually he settled on making religious music. And the songs he wrote include some of the most well-known songs of all time, like "Peace in the Valley" and "Take My Hand, Precious Lord".   That's a song he wrote in 1932, after his wife died in childbirth and his newborn son died a couple of days later. He was feeling a grief that most of us could never imagine, a pain that must have been more unbearable than anything anyone should have to suffer, and the pain came out in beauty like this:   [excerpt of Rosetta Tharpe singing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"]   That's not "primitive" music. That's not music that is unsophisticated. That's not some form of folk art. That's one man, a man who personally revolutionised music multiple times over, writing about his own personal grief and creating something that stands as great art without having to be patronised or given special consideration.   And the person singing on that recording is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who, like Dorsey, is someone who doesn't need to be given special treatment or be thought of as good considering her disadvantages or any of that patronising nonsense. Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of the great singers of her generation, and one of the great guitar players of all time. And she was making music that was as modern and cutting-edge as anything else made in the 1930s and 40s. She wasn't making music that was a remnant of something that would evolve into swing, no matter what John Hammond thought, she was making important music, and music that would in the long run be seen as far more important than most of the swing bands.   Obviously, one should not judge Hammond too harshly. He was from another time. A primitive.   Sister Rosetta was brought up in, and spent her life singing for, the Church of God in Christ. As many of my listeners are in Europe, as I am myself, it's probably worth explaining what this church is, because while it does have branches outside the US, that's where it's based, and that's where most of its membership is.   The Church of God in Christ is a Pentecostal church, and it's the largest Pentacostal church in the US, and the fifth-largest church full stop. I mention that it's a Pentacostal church, because that's something you need to understand to understand Rosetta Tharpe. Pentacostals believe in something slightly different to what most other Christian denominations believe.    Before I go any further, I should point out that I am *not* an expert in theology by any means, and that what I'm going to say may well be a mischaracterisation. If you're a Pentacostal and disagree with my characterisation of your religion here, I apologise, and if you let me know I'll at least update the show notes. No disrespect is intended.   While most Christians believe that humanity is always tainted by original sin, Pentacostals believe that it is possible for some people, if they truly believe -- if they're "born again" to use a term that's a little more widespread than just Pentacostalism -- to become truly holy. Those people will have all their past sins forgiven, and will then be sinless on Earth. To do this, you have to be "baptised in the Holy Ghost". This is different from normal baptism, what Pentacostals call "water baptism" -- though most Pentacostals think you should be water baptised anyway, as a precursor to the main event. Rather, this is the Holy Spirit descending from Heaven and entering you, filling you with joy and a sense of sanctity. This can often cause speaking in tongues and other strange behaviours, as people are enthused (a word which, in the original Greek, actually meant a god entering into you), and once this has happened you have the tendency to sin removed from you altogether.    This is all based on the Acts of the Apostles, specifically Acts 2:4, which describes how at the Pentecost (which is the seventh Sunday after Easter), "All were filled with the Holy Spirit. They began to express themselves in foreign tongues and make bold proclamation as the Spirit prompted them".   Unlike many Protestant denominations, which adhere to Calvinist beliefs that nobody can know if they're going to Heaven or Hell, and that only God can ever know this, and that nothing you do can make a difference to your chances, most Pentacostals believe that you can definitely tell whether you're going to Heaven. You're going to Heaven once you're sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and that's an end of it.   At least, it's an end of it so long as you continue with what's called "outward holiness", and so you have to dress conservatively, to avoid swearing, to avoid drinking or gambling or smoking, or dancing suggestively, or wearing makeup. If you do that, once the spirit's entered into you, you're going to remain holy and free from temptation. If you don't do that, well, then the Devil might get you after all.   This is a very real fear for many Pentacostals, who have a belief in a literal heaven and hell. And it's a fear that has inspired a *lot* of the most important musicians in rock and roll. But Pentacostalism isn't just about fear and living right, it's also about that feeling of elation and exhiliration when the holy spirit enters you. And music helps bring that feeling about.    It's no surprise that a lot of the early rock and rollers went to Pentacostal churches -- at many of them, especially in the South of the US, there's a culture of absolutely wild, unrestrained, passionate music and dancing, to get people into the mood to have the spirit enter them. And Sister Rosetta Tharpe is probably the greatest performer to come out of those churches.   But while most of the performers we'll be looking at started playing secular music, Sister Rosetta never did, or at least very rarely. But she was, nonetheless, an example of something that we'll see a lot in the history of rock -- the pull between the spiritual and the worldly.    From the very start of her career, Sister Rosetta was slightly different from the other gospel performers. While she lived in Chicago at the same time as Thomas Dorsey and Mahalia Jackson, she isn't generally considered part of the gospel scene that they were at the centre of -- because she was travelling round the country playing at revival meetings, rather than staying in one place. When her first marriage -- to a fellow evangelist, who apparently abused her -- broke up, she moved on to New York, and there she started playing to audiences that were very different from the churches she was used to.   Where people like Mahalia were playing church music for church people, Rosetta Tharpe was taking the gospel to the sinners. Throughout her career, she played in nightclubs and theatres, playing for any audience that would have her, and playing music that got them excited and dancing, even as she was singing about holiness.   She started playing the Cotton Club in 1938. The Cotton Club was the most famous club in New York, though in 1938 it was on its last days of relevance. It had been located in Harlem until 1936, but after riots in Harlem, it had moved to a more respectable area, and was now on Broadway.   In the twenties and early thirties, the Cotton Club had been responsible for the success of both Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway, though only Calloway was still playing there regularly by the time Rosetta Tharpe started performing there. It was still, though, the place to be seen -- at least if you were white. The Cotton Club was strictly segregated -- only black people on stage, but only white people in the audience. The black performers were there to be leered at, in the case of the showgirls, or to play up to black stereotypes. Even Duke Ellington, possibly the most sophisticated musician ever to come out of the United States, had been presented as a "jungle musician". The name itself -- the Cotton Club -- was trading on associations with slavery and cotton picking, and the feel of the new venue could probably be summed up by the fact that it had, on its walls, pictures of famous white bandleaders in blackface.   So it's not surprising that the performances that Sister Rosetta did at the Cotton Club were very different from the ones she'd been doing when she was travelling the country with her mother performing to church crowds. She was still playing the same music, of course -- in fact, over her career, she mostly stuck to the same quite small repertoire, rerecording the same material in new arrangements and with new emphases as she grew as an artist -- but now she was doing it as part of a parody of the very kind of church service she had grown up in and devoted her life to, with dancers pretending to be "Holy Rollers", mocking her religion even as her music itself was still devoted to it.   Originally, she was only taken on at the Cotton Club as a sort of trial, on a two-week engagement -- and apparently she thought the manager was joking when she was offered five hundred dollars a week, not believing she could be making that much money -- and her role was simply to be one of many acts who'd come on and do a song or two between the bigger acts who were given star billing. But she soon became a hit, and she soon got signed to Decca to make records.   Her first record was, of course, a song by Thomas Dorsey, originally titled "Hide Me in Thy Bosom" but given the newer title "Rock Me" by Tharpe. Her arrangement largely stuck to Dorsey's original, with one important exception -- where he had written "singing", Tharpe sang "swinging".   [excerpt of "Rock Me"]   Many people also claimed to hear a double entendre in the lyrics to "Rock Me", and to think the song was about more worldly matters than Dorsey had intended. Whether Tharpe thought that or not, it almost certainly factored into the decision to make it her first single.   When she was booked to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts, she performed both that song and "That's All", backed by Albert Ammons, one of the boogie woogie players who also appeared on the bill, and in the recording of that we can hear, rather better than in the studio recording, the raw power of Tharpe's performance.   [excerpt of "That's All" from Carnegie Hall]   The sound quality of these recordings isn't great, of course, but you can clearly hear the enthusiasm in that performance.   Tharpe's performances at the Cotton Club drew a great deal of attention, and Time magazine even did a feature on her, and how she “Swings Same Songs in Church and Night Club.” When the Cotton Club shut down she moved on to the Cafe Society, a venue booked by John Hammond, which was an integrated club and which fit her rather better.   While she was working there, she came to the attention of Lucky Millinder, the big band leader. Different people have different ideas as to how the two started working together -- Mo Gale, Millinder's manager, was also Chick Webb's manager, and claimed that it was his idea and that he'd seen Tharpe as being an Ella Fitzgerald to Millinder's Chick Webb, but Bill Doggett, the piano player with Millinder's band, said that it was Millinder's idea, not Gale's, to get Tharpe on board.   Either way, the combination worked well enough at first, as Tharpe got to sing the same songs she'd been performing earlier -- her gospel repertoire -- but with a big band backing her. She'd also switched to playing an electric guitar rather than an acoustic, and the effect on her guitar playing was extraordinary -- where before she'd had to be a busy accompanist, constantly playing new notes due to the lack of sustain from an acoustic guitar, now she was able to play single-note lead lines and rely on the orchestra to provide the chordal pad.   Her remake of "Rock Me" with Millinder's band, from 1941, shows just how much her artistry had improved in just three years:   [excerpt of 1941 "Rock Me"]   With that record, she more or less invented the guitar style that T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and others would adapt for themselves. That's just how you play electric blues now, but it wasn't how anyone played before Rosetta Tharpe.   Soon after she joined Millinder's band they moved to a residency at the Savoy Ballroom, and became one of the most popular bands for dancers in New York -- regulars there included a young man known as Detroit Red, who later changed his name to Malcolm X.  The Savoy Ballroom was closed down not long after -- allegedly for prostitution, but more likely because it allowed white women to dance with black men, and the city of New York wouldn't allow that -- although as Malcolm X said, it wasn't as if they were dragging the white women in there.   However, Millinder's band was an odd fit for Rosetta Tharpe, and she was increasingly forced to sing secular numbers along with the gospel music she loved. There were plenty of good things about the band, of course -- she became lifelong friends with its young trumpet player, Dizzy Gillespie, for example, and she enjoyed a tour where they were on the same bill as a young vocal group, The Four Ink Spots, but she was a little bit uncomfortable singing songs like "Tall Skinny Papa", which wasn't particularly gospel-like   [excerpt "Tall Skinny Papa"]   And it's not particularly likely that she was keen on the follow-up, although she didn't sing on that one.   [excerpt "Big Fat Mama"]   So eventually, she quit the Millinder band, without giving notice, and went back to performing entirely solo, at least at first.    This was in the middle of the musicians' union strike, but when that ended, Tharpe was back in the studio, and in September 1944 she began one of the two most important musical collaborations of her career, when she recorded "Strange Things Happening Every Day", with Sam Price on piano.   Sam Price did *not* get along with Tharpe. He insisted on her playing with a capo, because she was playing in an open tuning and wasn't playing in a normal jazz key. He didn't like the idea of combining gospel music with his boogie woogie style (eventually he was persuaded by Tharpe's mother, a gospel star in her own right who was by all accounts a fearsome and intimidating presence, that this was OK), and when the result became a massive hit, he resented that he got a flat fee.   But nonetheless, "Strange Things Happening Every Day" marks out the start of yet another new style for Tharpe -- and it's yet another song often credited as "the first rock and roll record".   [Excerpt "Strange Things Happening Every Day"]   Shortly after this, Tharpe started working with another gospel singer, Marie Knight. Her partnership with Marie Knight may have been a partnership in more than one sense. Knight denied the relationship to the end of her days -- and it's entirely understandable that she would, given that she was a gospel singer who was devoted to a particularly conservative church, and whose career also depended on that church -- but their relationship was regarded as an open secret within the gospel music community, which had a rather more relaxed attitude to homosexuality and bisexuality than the rest of the church. Some of Tharpe's friends have described her as a secret lesbian, but given her multiple marriages to men it seems more likely that she was bi -- although of course we will never know for sure.   Either way, Tharpe and Knight were a successful double act for many years, with their voices combining perfectly to provide a gospel vocal sound that was unlike anything ever recorded. They stopped working together in 1950, but remained close enough that Knight was in charge of Tharpe's funeral in 1973,   The two of them toured together -- and Tharpe toured later on her own -- in their own bus, which was driven by a white man. This gave them a number of advantages in a deeply segregated and racist country. It was considered acceptable for them to go into some public places where they otherwise wouldn't have been allowed, because they were with a white man -- if a black woman was with a white man, it was just assumed that she was sleeping with him, and unlike a white woman sleeping with a black man, this was considered absolutely acceptable, a sexual double-standard that dated back to slavery. If they needed food and the restaurant in a town was whites-only, they could send the white driver in to get them takeout. And if it came to it, if there was no hotel in town that would take black people, they could sleep on the bus.   And segregation was so accepted at the time by so many people that even when Tharpe toured with a white vocal group, the Jordanaires (who would later find more fame backing up some country singer named Elvis something) they just thought her having her own bus was cool, and didn't even make the connection to how necessary it was for her.   While Tharpe and Knight made many great records together, probably Tharpe's most important recording was a solo B-side to one of their singles, a 1947 remake of a song she'd first recorded in 1938, "This Train", again featuring Sam Price on piano:   [excerpt "This Train"]   That's a song that sets out the theology of the Pentacostal church as well as you'll ever hear it. This train is a *clean* train. You want to ride it you better get redeemed. No tobacco chewers or cigar smokers. No crap shooters. If you want to be bound for glory, you need to act holy.   There was no-one bigger than Tharpe in her genre. She is probably the first person to ever play rock and roll guitar in stadiums -- and not only that, she played rock and roll guitar in a stadium *at her wedding* -- her third wedding, to be precise, which took place at Griffith Stadium, the home of the Washington Senators and the Homestead Grays. Twenty thousand people came to see her get married and perform a gospel show afterwards, concluding with fireworks that first exploded in the shape of Tharpe playing her guitar before taking on other shapes like two hearts pierced with Cupid's arrow. Even Tharpe's half-sister had to pay for her ticket to the show. Apparently Tharpe signed the contract for her wedding seven months earlier, and then went out to find herself a husband.   Rosetta Tharpe's popularity started to wane in the 1950s, at least in her home country, but she retained a following in Europe. There's fascinating footage of her in 1964 filmed by Granada TV, playing at the abandoned Wilbraham Road railway station in Manchester. If you live in Manchester, as I do, that piece of track, which is now part of the Fallowfield cycle loop was the place where some of the greats of black American music were filmed for what may have been the greatest blues TV programme of all time -- along with Tharpe, there was Muddy Waters, Otis Span, Reverend Gary Davis, and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, all performing in the open air in Manchester in front of an extremely earnest audience of young white British people. Fittingly for an open-air show in Manchester, Tharpe opened her short set with "Didn't It Rain"   [Didn't It Rain TV performance excerpt]   By that time, Tharpe had become primarily known as a blues musician, even though she was still doing the same thing she'd always been doing, simply because music had moved on and recategorised her. But she'd had an influence on blues, R&B, and rock and roll music that most people didn't even realise. "This Train" was not written by Tharpe, exactly -- it dates back to the 1920s -- but it was definitely her version, and her rewrite, that inspired one of the most important blues records of all time:   [Excerpt of "My Babe"]   Indeed, only a few months after Rosetta Tharpe's UK performances, Gerry and the Pacemakers, one of the biggest bands of the new Merseybeat sound, who'd had three number one records that year in the UK, were recording their own version of "My Babe". Gerry and the Pacemakers were, in most respects, as far as you could imagine from gospel music, and yet the connection is there, closer than you'd think.   Rosetta Tharpe died in 1973, and never really got the recognition she deserved. She was only inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame last year. But if you've ever liked rock guitar, you've got her to thank. Shout, Sister, Shout!   Patreon As always, this podcast only exists because of the donations of my backers on Patreon. If you enjoy it, why not join them?