Two More Vocal Group Losses

Herman “Junior” Denby (1931-2013)

Herman “Junior” Denby, a lead singer and bass player with the classic Baltimore vocal group, the Swallows, died in West Chester, Ohio on July 14 at age 82. He had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The Swallows only made the R&B charts twice with “Will You Be Mine” in 1951 and “Beside You” in 1952, but their haunting ballads are perennial favorites among vocal group fans.

Herman Denby was born in Baltimore on June 26, 1931. In the late '40s, the success of a local group, the Orioles, inspired teenagers to form vocal groups. One of them, the Oakaleers, consisted of Eddie Rich, first tenor, Earl Hurley, second tenor; Herman “Junior” Denby, second tenor-baritone, Frederick “Money” Johnson, baritone; and Norris “Bunky” Mack, bass. Since bird groups were all the rage, the Oakaleers name was ditched in favor of the bird in their theme song, “When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano,” which oddly enough they never recorded.

The Swallows' local reputation won them an audition with King Records' A&R man Henry Glover. Their first session took place in April 1951, and “Will You Be Mine”/”Dearest” was released the following month. Eddie Rich sang the lead on their first several ballads, but Glover eventually came to prefer Denby's baritone, which resembled the sound of popular crooner Charles Brown. Denby also wrote several of their songs. The Swallows also recorded up-tempo numbers, including the off-color classics “It Ain't the Meat” and “Bicycle Tillie,” with bass Bunky Mack doing the leads. Here are two examples of Denby's vocal style.

In 1952, Herman Denby was drafted into the Marines. The group continued to perform through 1955, with eleven releases on King and one on the After Hours label. When Denby returned from the service, he attempted a solo career on King. His two releases were unsuccessful and he left the music business. Eddie Rich formed a second Swallows group in 1957 and they had four records on Federal in 1958. Denby was not involved.

The Swallows group that appeared at oldies shows over the last couple of decades was led by Eddie Rich. Herman Denby only sang with them twice, once at their induction into the United Group Harmony Association Hall of Fame in 1994. He also sang with Harold Winley's Ink Spots, but gave it up saying that he could not meet the standard set by Bill Kenny.

Lewis Lymon (1944?-2013)

Lewis Lymon, younger brother of Frankie Lymon and a major participant in the kiddie lead fad of the mid-'50s, died July 9 of prostate cancer at his home in Las Vegas at the age of 69.

I'm unable to come up with Lewis Lymon's exact date of birth, but he was the third eldest of four brothers from the Harlem musical family. Their father, Howard, was a member of the Harlemaires, a gospel group. In 1955, Frankie Lymon, then 13, and the Teenagers recorded the #1 R&B hit “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?,” which was followed by several other hits by vocal groups with young teenagers singing lead.

Capitalizing on the family name and the similarity of his voice to Frankie's, Lewis formed a group called the Teen Chords in 1956. The other members were Lyndon Harold, David Little, Rossilio Rocca and Ralph Vaughan. They initially signed with Harlem entrepreneur Bobby Robinson's Fury label. The Teen Chords released six records in all, three on Fury, two on End and one on the Juanita label. None of them made the R&B charts, but their first release, “I'm So Happy,” was a local hit in New York.

Fortunately, we have a video of the Teen Chords lip syncing their 1957 release, “Your Last Chance,” on the eccentric New York disc jockey Douglas “Jocko” Henderson's televison program.

You probably know Frankie Lymon's tragic story. Although he and the Teenagers had several other hits, after his voice changed, he was unsuccessful in his attempts to become a pop singer. He died of a heroin overdose in 1968 at the age of 25.

When the Teenagers began to appear on the oldies circuit, Lewis Lymon was the obvious choice to sing Frankie's songs, as well as some of his own. He sometimes shared the lead singing with family friend Jimmy Castor, who died recently and was also a part of the New York kiddie lead scene. Here he is singing “I'm So Happy” at a 1995 Pittsburgh oldies show.

You may also be interested in reading:

And Now For Something Completely Different

Vocal Group Roll Call

Video of the Week #25

Here are Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers from 1961 doing “Dat Dere:” Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Lee Morgan, trumpet; Bobby Timmins, piano; Jymie Merritt, bass; and Art Blakey, drums. Timmins is the composer of the song.

George Duke (1946-2013)

I really think it's possible . . . to make good music and be commercial at the same time. I believe it's the artist's responsibility to take the music to the people. Art for art's sake is nice; but if art doesn't communicate, then its worth is negated. It has not fulfilled its destiny.

                                                                                 George Duke

Keyboard player, singer and record producer George Duke, whose career spanned the worlds of jazz and R&B, died on August 5 at the age of 67. The cause was leukemia.

The general consensus among jazz fans is that George Duke gave up a promising career as a jazz pianist and keyboardist in order to become a pop music producer and that most of his music after 1975 is of little interest. Like all generalizations, there are exceptions, but I have to agree that his recent blend of smooth jazz and R&B was, for the most part, pretty boring.

George Duke was born on January 12, 1946 in San Rafael, California. He began taking piano lessons at age 4 after seeing a performance by Duke Ellington. He held music degrees from San Francisco State University and the San Francisco Conservatory. He formed a trio in the mid-'60s and recorded his first album in 1966. He shared a recording with violinist Jean-Luc Ponty in 1969. During the first half of the '70s, he alternated between genres, playing synthesizer with Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention and electric piano with the Cannonball Adderley Quintet. He recorded with Sonny Rollins in 1975. Here he is with Zappa and Ponty.

In 1976, he formed a jazz fusion group with drummer Billy Cobham, and in 1981 he partnered with bassist Stanley Clarke on the Clarke-Duke Project. The first of his nine songs to make the R&B charts was the funk classic “Reach For It” in 1977. It was followed the next year by his popular novelty, “The Dukey Stick.” His biggest hit was was the ballad “Sweet Baby” that he recorded with Clarke in 1981. For much of the rest of his career, he sang and produced pop/R&B songs, such as Deniece Williams' #1 song, “Let's Hear It For the Boy.” His vocal persona reminded me of Barry White, but in a higher register.

He was involved in a variety of interesting projects. In 1979, he did the critically-acclaimed A Brazilian Love Affair with vocalists Milton Nascimento and Flora Purim. He also contributed to Michael Jackson's album Off the Wall, produced by Quincy Jones. During the '80s, he played off-and-on with Miles Davis. He was the composer of “Cobra,” from Miles' 1989 CD Amandla. That's Kenny Garrett on alto saxophone.

He received a Grammy in 2000 as producer of In the Moment—Live In Concert by his cousin, singer Dianne Reeves. He also produced for Smokey Robinson, the Pointer Sisters, Take Six and many others. He was leader or co-leader of almost 40 albums. His recent CDs did well on the smooth jazz charts. Here he is with the promo for his final album, Dreamweaver, released last month.

Video of the Week #24

Skip James was an early Mississippi delta blues singer, known for his haunting falsetto. He recorded 18 sides for Paramount in 1931. They didn't sell well and he retired. He was rediscovered by blues enthusiasts in 1964, and he performed and recorded intermittently until his death in 1969. This video was shot by blues researcher Alan Lomax at an after hours gathering during the 1966 Newport Folk Festival. James sings “Devil Got My Woman,” “I'm So Glad” and “Worried Blues.”

This is not the Skip James of 1931. His health was not good and he flubs some guitar lines, but this is rare footage of a blues pioneer. Incidentally, the big guy in the white shirt on the right is Howlin' Wolf. I'm pretty sure the man in the hat in the background is Mississippi John Hurt.

The Human Orchestra

In 1985, a Swedish LP compiled by American researcher Doug Seroff, The Human Orchestra, gave many of us our first opportunity to hear pre-World War II American vocal groups other than the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots. (This LP was expanded to two CDs—from 16 songs to 50—and reissued by Jasmine in 2010. It is an essential item for vocal group fans.) The title refers to a style popularized by the Mills Brothers, but common to many other vocal groups, in which group members imitated the sounds of musical instruments, such as the trumpet and the bass. The Mills Brothers' imitations were so uncanny that their record labels read “Four Boys and a Guitar,” so the audience would know they were listening to the human voice rather than musical instruments. (Of course, the use of the word “boys” to refer to adult men was an objectionable racial slur.) Here they are doing “Tiger Rag” from 1931.

As Friedman and Gribin point out, imitation was one of two ways in which vocal groups incorporated the sound of a band into their songs. The other more common approach was instrument replacement, in which group members provided background support for the lead vocalist, but without trying to sound like specific instruments. These backgrounds often took the form of nonsense syllables, and one interpretation of the term “doo-wop” is that it refers to these background sounds. (There is another, less polite interpretation of “doo-wop” that I won't go into now.)

To illustrate, here's one of my favorite rhythm and blues vocal group sides from 1956, “Up on the Mountain” by the Magnificents. While it is often said to be a combination of various street sounds that were popular in Chicago at the time, it sounds very much like a vocal group version of a big band arrangement. It begins with two different riffs prior to the start of the main melody. The melody is in the traditional AABA song format, but it has an unusual structure. The A section is 32 bars (8 lines) long rather than the typical 16 bars. The B section, or bridge, is only 12 bars (3 lines) long. Based on its lyrics, it could be a blues—the second line repeats the first—but it lacks a blues chord structure. Finally, the song ends with the group imitating a big band instrumental fadeout.

You probably noticed that “Tiger Rag” also included some scat singing. Scat singing, popular during the bebop era, is essentially improvising using the human voice. In effect, the singer is taking a solo, just like the other members of the band. The greatest of all scat singers was Ella Fitzgerald; here she is doing “How High the Moon?”

A related jazz vocal style, sometimes confused with scat singing, is vocalese, in which the composer writes words to a famous solo previously recorded by a jazz musician. To the best of my knowledge, this genre was originated by the Delta Rhythm Boys with their version of Duke Ellington's “Take the A Train.” (Check it out.) Vocalese was popularized by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in the early '60s. Manhattan Tranfer is a contemporary vocalese group. Here are Lambert, Hendricks and Ross doing “Cloudburst,” in which Jon Hendricks sings words to a tenor sax solo previously recorded by Sam “The Man” Taylor.

You may also be interested in reading:

Book Review:  The Encyclopedia of Early American Vocal Groups

The Soundies #7

Video of the Week #23

Here's the John Coltrane Quartet—Coltrane, soprano sax; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; and Elvin Jones, drums—playing “Afro-Blue” on Ralph J. Gleason's TV show, Jazz Casual. I don't have the date, but they recorded the song in 1964.

Book Review: Douglas Friedman, Anthony Gribin, The Encyclopedia of Early American Vocal Groups—100 Years of Harmony: 1850 to 1950

Vocal group fans know that, with the exception of a few popular groups such as the Mills Brothers and the Ink Spots, there is very little information available about pre-World War II singing groups. Douglas Friedman, a retired lawyer, and Anthony Gribin, a practicing psychologist, both now working as music researchers, set out to fill this gap. Mr. Gribin previously co-authored The Complete Book of Doo-Wop, the most comprehensive treatment of post-war rhythm and blues vocal groups.

The book is divided into four parts.

• The first 94 pages are a narrative history of pre-1950 vocal groups, divided into four chapters: pre-1890, 1890-1920, the '20s and '30s, and the '40s. Each chapter begins with a discussion of the technologies which shaped the performance of vocal groups during the period. This is followed by histories of the major groups, with white and black groups discussed separately—an approach which encourages the myth of greater stylistic differences between them than actually existed. (Who but Billboard's reporters would have known to classify the Four Tunes as “race” music?) The text ends with discussion of two late '40s groups, the Orioles and the Ravens, who paved the way for the golden age of vocal groups in the '50s. Gospel and country groups are mentioned only briefly.
• The next 183 pages are a groupography—an alphabetical listing of the known personnel and histories of over a thousand groups. Entries vary in length from a short phrase to about half a page. References are given to CDs—primarily the Document Records vocal group series—that include selections by the group.
• This is followed by 235 pages of discographies of those groups known to have recorded. Most discographies list songs chronologically either by session or by order of release. Friedman and Gribin list the songs alphabetically. This is helpful when trying to locate a song, but I prefer to follow how a group's repetoire changes over time.
• Finally, there are four appendixes: technology (again), sheet music, post cards, and various lists of their favorite artists and songs.

To briefly summarize, early vocal groups sang in a very formal and structured way. Group members sang multi-part harmony in unison, almost like a small choir. Over time, the arrangements become looser and more variable. Lead singers began to sing the melody, while the other group members sang background riffs, often using a call-and-response pattern. New styles were introduced such as the walking bass line, or a falsetto high tenor soaring above the rest of the group. All these innovations were made possible by microphones and recording technologies that allowed a clearer separation between each member's contribution to the group.

There is a lot of fascinating information in this book. Much of the fun comes from looking at the photographs. Both the first and last sections are heavily illustrated, with pictures of groups and sheet music covers accounting for most of them. But one of the dominant messages of the book is how little is actually known about early American vocal groups. No personnel lists or photographs exist for the overwhelming majority of groups. Given our current state of information overload about entertainers, it is easy to forget how little communication about popular music was available 100 years ago. What we know about most of the groups comes from names and pictures on the covers of sheet music. Groups also advertised themselves by distributing postcards—a practice of which I had been only dimly aware.

A depressing side message is the popularity of minstrel shows during this period. Many of these songs were racist—so-called “coon” songs such as “You'se Just a Little Nigger, Still You'se Mine, All Mine” and “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” both ironically written by black composers. After about 1910, minstrel shows were gradually replaced by vaudeville, but they still existed in this country as late as the '50s.

This is a reference book that belongs in the music section of any library. It's also an interesting enough read to deserve a place in the personal bookshelves of vocal group fans like me.