This is the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet doing "On the Sunny Side of the Street" in Belgium in 1958. His partner is Sonny Stitt on the tenor sax. The other group members are Lou Levy, piano; Ray Brown, bass; and Gus Johnson, drums.
I would have featured their version of "Blues Walk" had I not already posted a version of the same song by Dexter Gordon (as "Loose Walk"). But in case you'd like to hear it again. . . (Sonny Stitt really shines on this one.)
This week's video is a scene from the 1948 musical comedy A Song is Born, directed by Howard Hawks. Danny Kaye stars as a music professor trying to document the history of jazz. The girl singer is acted by Virginia Mayo, but her voice is dubbed by Jeri Sullavan. I've never heard of her either, but there are lots of familiar musicians here, including: Louis Armstrong, trumpet; Tommy Dorsey, trombone; Benny Goodman, clarinet; Charlie Barnet, alto sax; Lionel Hampton, vibes; Mel Powell, piano; Harry Babasin, bass; and Louis Bellson, drums. The Latin group is Russo and the Samba Kings, and the vocal group is the Golden Gate Quartet.
For nearly all the great post-World
War II rhythm and blues vocal groups, complete or nearly complete
packages of their releases are available on CD. But one nagging
exception has been the Dominoes. The owners of the
King-Federal catalog have been reluctant to release much of it or to
lease it to others. Rhino turned out an excellent 20-song greatest
hits package in 1993, but other Dominoes releases have been haphazard
and incomplete. So when Acrobat Records in the U.K.
announced its new Dominoes Collection, it seemed like a collector's
dream come true. It contains all their single records
between 1951 and 1959 on the Federal, King, Jubilee, Decca, Liberty
and RoZan labels, in order of release. That's 88 songs on three CDs,
everything except some uninteresting Liberty album cuts.
A comprehensive history of the Dominoes
by Marv Goldberg is available at his website. The liner notes of
this collection are an abridged version. The group made the R&B
charts 11 times between 1951 and 1953, and once in 1957. Their success was due mainly to their three high tenor leads: Clyde McPhatter,
Jackie Wilson and Gene Mumford. Clyde McPhatter was with the group
from 1950 to 1952 and sang the lead on 16 of these songs and an
alternate take. He left to form the Drifters, where he had even
greater success, and went on to have several hits on his own. Fortunately
for group leader Billy Ward, Jackie Wilson was available as his replacement. He led the
group 24 times between 1953 and 1956, before launching his own solo career
under the supervision of Berry Gordy, Jr. Gene Mumford, former lead
singer of the Larks, led the group only four times, but one of them
was their hit version of “Star Dust” in 1957.
The original Dominoes were Clyde
McPhatter, lead tenor; Charlie White, tenor; Joe Lamont, baritone;
Bill Brown, bass; and Billy Ward, pianist and arranger. Their first and biggest hit was an up-tempo novelty,
“Sixty Minute Man,” with Bill Brown in the lead. It was #1 on
the R&B charts for an amazing 14 weeks in 1951.
Original source unknown
You may wonder how they got away with
such obvious sexual innuendos in 1951. In those days, airplay on
mainstream White radio stations was irrelevant, since they never
played any “race music” anyway. Chart success depended on
airplay on a small number of urban Black stations and on juke boxes,
where standards were more relaxed. Some cover for this song was
provided by the fact that its title was a commonly used sports term.
A “sixty minute man” was a football player who played on both the
first-string offensive and defensive teams, and therefore was on the
field for the entire game. Many pre-war football stars, such as Red
Grange, were sixty minute men, but the practice was gradually phased
out during the '50s.
Clyde McPhatter is generally
acknowledged to have been the greatest of all the R&B lead singers. He
sang in a soulful style typical of his gospel background. I always
marvel at his seemingly effortless intensity. The McPhatter-led
“Have Mercy, Baby” was #1 for an almost as amazing 10 weeks in 1952. The flip side,
“Deep Sea Blues,” also on this video, is a neglected classic.
Billy Ward came to show business after
a successful military career, achieving the rank of Captain. He
seemed to bring military culture with him, as he ruled the group much
like a drill sergeant. He paid the other group members an inadequate salary and did not socialize with them. He had an elaborate set of
rules governing all aspects of dress and behavior, 24/7, with fines
for violations. For example, group members were fined $50 for
leaving their hotel room at night, and $100 for failing to report a
fellow group member leaving his room. When the group played in
Clyde McPhatter's home town, he was forbidden to visit his family.
Not surprisigly, there was a lot of turnover. In 1952, Ward began billing the group as Billy Ward and His Dominoes. When
McPhatter quit, one reason he gave was that he was tired of
fans calling him “Mr. Ward.”
Jackie Wilson also had a great voice,
but with less nuance than McPhatter. He sang ballads in an almost
operatic style. Too many of them sounded like production numbers.
He became a better singer after leaving the Dominoes. “Rags to
Riches,” released in 1953, was a major milestone for the group.
It was a cover of a pop hit by Tony
Bennett, it was Wilson's first success as lead singer, and it appeared on the King label, rather than Federal, its R&B
affiliate. For the next few years, the group had a two-track career,
releasing R&B songs on Federal, and covers of pop songs
and standards on King. Ward had them imitate the style of the Platters. His
ultimate goal, which he eventually achieved in 1957, was to move the
group off the chitlin' circuit and into Las Vegas.
Beginning in 1954, the group went into
a long slump. Ward increasingly assigned himself the role of lead
singer (16 times) and his performances sometimes bordered on
incompetence. Apparently no one had the cojones
to tell him. The songs he wrote, usually with manager Rose
Marks, became increasingly trivial. Many of them were
quasi-religious pop tunes, the best known examples being “Christmas
in Heaven” and “St. Therese of the Roses.” After Wilson left,
things fell apart. However, the group had a brief revival in 1957, when
Ward had the good fortune to hire Gene Mumford, and “Star Dust”
and “Deep Purple” crossed over onto the pop charts.
So why is this collection not
recommended? There are two problems. First of all, almost all the
great songs are on the first CD, and after that, the pickings get
increasingly slim. I admit this puts the people who compiled
this collection in a bind. On the one hand, the set would
have been stronger if they had dropped 30 songs and put the rest on
two CDs. However, collectors like me would not have been satisfied
with this. We would always have wondered whether there were
hidden gems among the songs we hadn't heard. Sadly, I didn't find
any.
The other problem is more serious.
This collection is a bootleg assembled from source materials of
varying quality. Many of the cuts are muffled or contain seriously distracting
surface noise. Volume fluctuates considerably from song to song. As
an example of the carelessness with which the package was assembled,
the Jackie Wilson-led ballad “Until the Real Thing Comes Along,”
from 1953, which should have been on CD 2, is reversed with “Love,
Love, Love,” from 1952, on CD 1. Finally, on my CD 3, sound
quality goes seriously downhill from about the middle. Cut 24 skips
badly, and the remaining six songs will not track on either my CD
player or computer. I could send the set back as defective, but I
don't care much about these songs anyway, and it's possible the
entire run is damaged.
It sucks, but we may have to wait a few
more years for the definitive Dominoes collection. In the meantime,
you may want to try to find the now out-of-print Rhino set.
Disc 1: Do Something For Me;
Chicken Blues; Harbor Lights; No, Says My Heart; The Deacon Moves In
(with Little Esther); Sixty Minute Man; I Can't Escape From You;
Heart to Heart (with Little Esther); I Am With You; Weeping Willow
Blues; That's What You're Doing to Me; When the Swallows Come Back to
Capistrano; Have Mercy, Baby; Deep Sea Blues; Until the Real Thing
Comes Along; I'd Be Satisfied; No Room; Yours Forever; I'm Lonely;
The Bells; Pedal Pushin' Papa; These Foolish Things Remind Me of You;
Don't Leave Me This Way; You Can't Keep a Good Man Down; Where Now,
Little Heart?; Rags to Riches; Don't Thank Me; Christmas in Heaven.
(77 min.)
Disc 2:
Ringin' in a Brand New Year; My Baby's 3-D; Love, Love, Love;
Tootsie Roll; I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town; Tenderly; A
Little Lie, Handwriting on the Wall; One Moment With You (unedited
version); Three Coins in the Fountain; Lonesome Road; Little Things
Mean a Lot; I Really Don't Want to Know; Above Jacob's Ladder; Little
Black Train; Gimme, Gimme, Gimme; Come to Me, Baby; Can't Do Sixty No
More; If I Ever Get to Heaven; Cave Man; Love Me Now and Let Me Go;
Take Me Back to Heaven; Sweethearts on Parade; Learnin' the Blues;
May I Never Love Again; Give Me You; Over the Rainbow; Bobby Sox
Baby; How Long, How Long Blues; St. Therese of the Roses. (76 min.)
Disc 3:
Home is Where You Hang Your Heart; Will You Remember?; Come On,
Snake, Let's Crawl; Evermore; Half a Love; Rock, Plymouth Rock; 'Til
Kingdom Come; Star Dust; Lucinda; St. Louis Blues; One Moment With
You (edited version); Deep Purple; Do It Again; I Don't Stand a Ghost
of a Chance; To Each His Own; My Proudest Possession; Someone Greater
Than I; When the Saints Go Marching In; September Song; Solitude;
Sweeter As the Years Go By; Jennie Lee; Music, Maestro, Please;
Please Don't Say No; Behave, Hula Girl; That's How You Know You're
Growing Old; Lay It On the Line; These Foolish Things Remind Me of
You (alternate take); My Fair-Weather Friend; The Man in the
Stained-Glass Window. (74 min.)
Today is the 102nd birthday of Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, who died in 1982. Here he plays and sings "Come Go With Me" and "Lightnin's Blues" to an appreciative European audience in 1964.
There is very little available video footage of Chicago blues harmonica great, Little Walter. Here he is doing an instrumental, "Little Walter's Jump," backed by Hound Dog Taylor on guitar, Dillard Crume on bass and Odie Payne on drums. This is from a 1967 European tour. He died in 1968.
The only other video footage of Walter I know of is from the same tour. He backs up Hound Dog Taylor doing "Wild About You," and Koko Taylor on "Wang Dang Doodle." If he sang during this show, it seems not to have been recorded.
Legendary Pittsburgh disc jockey Porky Chedwick died of heart failure yesterday, March 2, at his home in the
Brookline neighborhood. He had recently turned 96. Porky was a
beloved figure among Pittsburgh baby boomers who grew up listening to
his programs. He was the first white disc jockey in a Northeastern city
to play “race records” to a primarily white audience. He went on
the air in the summer of 1948, three years before Alan Freed started
up a similar rhythm and blues program in Cleveland. Pittsburghers
consider him a much-ignored pioneer of rock and roll.
George Jacob Chedwick was born the son
of a steelworker in Homestead, PA, near Pittsburgh. He later changed
his first name to Craig. His nickname came from his chubbiness as a
child, but he was not overweight as an adult. A childhood slingshot
accident left him with permanent double vision and he was unable to
drive. He worked various jobs before joining the staff of WHOD in
Homestead as a sports announcer. It was probably the fact that WHOD
was so low in power (1000 watts) that gave him the freedom to play
rhythm and blues. Later the station became WAMO and increased its
power considerably. He remained with WAMO until 1984.
Porky began by playing old rhythm and
blues records (“dusty discs”) donated by record stores because
they were no longer selling. After he became successful, independent labels brought their records to him. He had a habit of
turning them over and playing the B-sides. Although he liked all
R&B, he had a particular fondness for vocal group records. He
developed a rapid-fired on-air delivery filled with “Porkisms.”
He was “Pork the Tork,” “the boss man,” a “platter-pushin'
Papa,” who was “the Daddy-O of the raddio.”
Although I did not grow up around
Pittsburgh, it's easy to understand people's attachment to
Porky, since Alan Freed, who moved to New York in the fall of 1954,
played a similar role in my life. Unlike Freed, Porky was always
cheerful, not confrontational, and in his later years, enjoyed the
affection even of Pittsburghers who had no interest in his music.
Porky was on and off the air with
several Pittsburgh stations throughout the remainder of his life and hosted a program as recently as 2011. In
1996, he was one of a group of disc jockeys honored in an exhibit at
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1998, he celebrated his 50th
anniversary in music with “Porkstock,” an all-day concert at Three Rivers
Stadium. He made regular appearances at Pittsburgh oldies shows,
including Henry DeLuca's Roots of Rock and Roll concerts and T. J.
Lubinsky's PBS specials, where he would typically entertain the audience with a
few “Porkisms” to a standing ovation.
Porky's last appearance came just 8
days before he died, at Henry DeLuca's final Roots of Rock and Roll concert at the Benedum Center on February 22. DeLuca brought the
series to a close after 40 concerts in 34 years. Like Porky' radio
programs, his shows are a victim of demography. Very few '50s are
artists are still alive and performing at a high level, and the
audience was tiring of seeing the same few groups every year.
The close of this series and Porky's
death mark the end of an era. Pittsburgh can no longer be called the oldies
capital of the US.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968, you can't say
“nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh,
forced busing, states rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting
so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these
things you're talking about are totally economic things and a
byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites. . . “We
want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing
thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Lee
Atwater (1981)
This quote comes from an anonymous
interview given by Republican campaign manager Lee Atwater, then a
member of the Reagan administration, to a political scientist in
1981. (You can find the entire interview here.) It describes the
Republicans' Southern strategy, in which they used race-baiting to
successfully persuade Southern Whites to vote against their economic
self-interest and realigned political party membership in the
South. It was originated by operatives for Richard Nixon,
but Atwater was the best known practitioner of this strategy,
which still strongly influences American politics.
Atwater became a rising star in 1980 by
defeating a South Carolina Democratic Congressman in part by using
fake telephone surveys that falsely implied that the Congressman was
an NAACP member. He was known for his ruthless use of “dirty
tricks,” including false rumors about his opponents' mental health
or alleged criminal connections. He reached the height of his fame
as manager of George H. W. Bush's 1988 presidential campaign, where he approved
the infamous Willie Horton ad, that played on White fears of Black
criminals. Following the election, he became chairman of the
Republican National Committee. He died of brain cancer in 1991 at
the age of 40. After learning that he had terminal cancer, he
claimed to have experienced a religious conversion and apologized for
some of his behavior.
Atwater, a South Carolina native,
was an accomplished rock guitarist and fan of the
blues. His album, Red Hot and Blue,
with B. B. King and several Memphis musicians, won a Grammy in 1991.
Atwater always denied he was a racist, citing his personal
relationships with blues artists as evidence. His biography raises
interesting questions. Can you deliberately pursue policies that are
harmful to African-Americans by using campaign tactics that appeal to
White racism and still credibly claim that you are not a racist? In other
words, can you repeatedly engage in racist behavior without
developing racist attitudes? You would expect that Atwater would
have experienced a lot of cognitive dissonance. If Atwater is to be
believed—and given all the lies he told, there is no reason he
should be—he must have been a master at compartmentalizing the different parts of his life.
All of this has come back to our
attention because Atwater arranged a concert in Washington on January 21, 1989, the day after Bush's inauguration, featuring a number of
blues and R&B artists. Among those I know to have participated
were William Bell, Bo Diddley, Albert Collins, Steve Cropper, Willie Dixon, Dr. John, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Eddie Floyd, Delbert McClinton, Sam Moore, Billy Preston, Percy Sledge, Koko Taylor, Carla
Thomas, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joe Louis Walker and Ron Wood.
The concert seems
to have aroused considerable cognitive dissonance in the performers at least,
but the consensus seemed to be that you don't turn down an
opportunity to play for the President, no matter how much you dislike
his politics. Willie Dixon engaged in some low-key subversion by
wearing a “Jesse Jackson for President” button as he performed.
The concert, long believed to have been lost, has been rediscovered. According to an article in last Friday's New York Times, excerpts from the concert, A
Celebration of Blues and Soul,
will be shown on PBS sometime in March. A search of the WQED (Pittsburgh) website turned up no
match. The entire concert is to be released on DVD on May 6. Both
programs are said to have been almost completely stripped of their
political context. If I get any further information about when the
PBS program will air, I'll update this post.
Sonny Rollins plays one of his most popular compositions, "St. Thomas," in this 1968 clip from Danish TV. With him are Kenny Drew, piano; Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, bass; and Albert "Tootie" Heath, drums.
