| ARTIST | SONG | ALBUM |
|---|---|---|
| Myra Taylor | Tell Your Best Friend Nothin' | Kansas City Jumps |
| Blue Lu Barker | Buy Me Some Juice | Don't You Feel My Leg |
| Helen Humes | Be Ba Ba Le Ba Boogie | Helen Humes 1945-1947 |
| Buddy Banks w/ Fluffy Hunter | Fluffy's Debut | Happy Home Blues |
| Jimmie Gordon | That Woman's A Pearl Diver | Chicago Is Just That Way |
| Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup | Crudup's After Hours | A Music Man Like Nobody Ever Saw |
| Jazz Gillum | Roll Dem Bones | The Essential |
| Lee Brown | Round The World Boogie | Chicago Is Just That Way |
| Muddy Waters | Hard Days | Down Home Blues Chicago Vol. 2 |
| James Clark | Drifting | Down Home Blues Chicago Vol. 2 |
| Johnny Shines | Delta Pine Blues | Down Home Blues Chicago Vol. 2 |
| Saunders King | S.K. Jumps, Part 1 | Saunders King 1942-48 |
| Louis Jordan | Ain't That Just Like A Woman | Let The Good Times Roll 1938-1954 |
| Amos Milburn | Down the Road a Piece | The Complete Aladdin Recordings |
| Charles Brown | Sunny Road | Sunny Road |
| Tommy Jenkins | Freedom Choo Choo Blues | The Truman And Eisenhower Blues |
| Roosevelt Sykes | Living In A Different World | Roosevelt Sykes Vol. 8 1945-1947 |
| Doctor Clayton | Angels In Harlem | When The Sun Goes Down |
| Big Three Trio | You Sure Look Good, to Me | A Shot in the Dark: Nashville Jumps |
| Buster Bennett | Jersey Cow Boogie | Buster Bennett 1945-1947 |
| Bertha Chippie Hill | How Long Blues | Jazzin' The Blues 1943 -1952 |
| Effie Smith | Effie's Boogie | Effie Smith 1945-1953 |
| Julia Lee | Gotta Gimme What'cha Got | Sleazy Rhythm & Blues |
| Lowell Fulson | Fulson's Blues | Classic Cuts 1946-53 |
| Big Bill Broonzy | Old Man Blues | Big Bill Broonzy Vol. 12 1945 -1947 |
| Tampa Red | Crying Won't Help You | Tampa Red Vol. 13 1945-1947 |
| T-Bone Walker | Don't Leave Me Baby | T-Bone Walker 1940-1954 |
| Johnny Temple | Believe My Sins Have Found Me Out | Broke, Black And Blue |
| Geechie Smith | The Kaycee Kid | Geechie Smith & Crown Prince Waterford 1946-1954 |
| Al "Cake" Wichard Sextette w/ Jimmy Witherspoon | Roll 'Em Boy (take 1) | Cake Walkin': The Modern Recordings 1947-1948 |
| Ivory Joe Hunter | Bad Luck Blues | Blues at Sunrise: The Essential Ivory Joe Hunter |
| Roy Milton | Milton's Boogie | The Specialty Story |
| Pete Johnson | 1946 Stomp (1280 Stomp) | Pete Johnson 1944-46 |
| Cecil Gant | Ninth Street Jive | A Shot in the Dark: Nashville Jumps |
| Lightnin' Hopkins | That Mean Old Twister | All The Classics 1946-1951 |
| Brownie McGhee | Brownie's Blues | New York Blues: 1946-1948 |
| Sonny Boy Williamson | Sonny Boy's Cold Chills | The Original Sonny Boy Williamson Vol. 2 |
Show Notes:
Today’s show is the twentieth installment of an ongoing series of programs built around a particular year. The first year we spotlighted was 1927 which was the beginning of a blues boom that would last until 1930. The Depression had a shattering effect on the pockets of black record buyers and sales of blues records plummeted in the years 1931 through 1933. Things picked up again in 1934 with the companies recording full-scale again. A major impact on recordings in 1942 was the musician’s strike. In addition, 78s were made of shellac, a product rationed during the war. This coupled with the Petrillo Ban caused blues and gospel 78s to drop from about 450 in 1937 to about 288 in 1941 to about 131 in 1942, as few as in 1933, in the depths of the depression.
On August 1, 1942, the American Federation of Musicians began a strike against the major American recording companies because of disagreements over royalty payments. Beginning at midnight, July 31, 1942, no union musician could make commercial recordings for any commercial record company. The strike lasted through 1944. With recording and manufacturing equipment idle from the strike, enterprising music promoters, record distributors, and store owners with the right connections took the opportunity to start small specialty labels, such as Savoy (1942) and Apollo (1944). Recording had resumed in 1945 and was up considerably from the previous years and continued it’s upswing in 1946. The year 1946 saw boogie-woogie as a still popular trend and it was also a good year for woman singers with fine records from the likes of Helen Humes, Blue Lu Barker, Julia Lee, Effie Smith, Lil Green and many others. Several pre-war artists continued putting out fine records like Tampa Red, Johnny Temple, Jazz Gillum, Big Bill Broonzy, Roosevelt Sykes plus some key debuts from artists such as Lowell Fulson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Johnny Shines, Amos Milburn and the first commercial recordings of Muddy Waters.
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| Left to Right: Wallace Huff (tb), Elmer “Basie” Day (b), Fluffy Hunter (vo), Buddy Banks (ts), Frosty Pyles (g), Nat “Monk” McFay (dm)Earl Knight (p). 1945 |
As mentioned there was some exceptional woman singers recorded in 1946. Myra Taylor was born in Bonner Springs, Kansas, but her family moved to Kansas City, Missouri’s historic 18th and Vine area when she was a child. In the 1930s, she toured the Midwest with Clarence Love’s band. She moved to Chicago in 1937 and worked with Warren “Baby” Dodds, Lonnie Johnson, Roy Eldridge and Lil Hardin Armstrong. She returned to Kansas City in 1940 and Harlan Leonard hired Taylor as the featured singer for his new band Harlan Leonard and His Rockets. She made her first record with the group in 1940 and cut a few sides for Mercury in 1946.
Bertha “Chippie” Hill first recorded in November 1925 for Okeh Records, backed by Louis Armstrong. Hill recorded 23 titles between 1925 and 1929. In the 1930s she retired from singing to raise her seven children. Hill staged a comeback in 1946 with Lovie Austin’s Blues Serenaders and recorded for Rudi Blesh’s Circle label. She began appearing on radio and in clubs and concerts in New York, including in 1948 the Carnegie Hall concert with Kid Ory, and she sang at the Paris Jazz Festival, and worked with Art Hodes in Chicago. She was back again in 1950, when she was run over by a car and killed in New York at the age of 45.
Lesser known was the fine singer Fluffy Hunter. By the fall of 1946, Fluffy Hunter hooked up with the Buddy Banks Sextet in L.A. Banks had recently enjoyed a #4 R&B hit with “Voo-It! Voo-It!” with Marion Abernathy. In October 1946 they held a recording session for Otis Rene’s Excelsior Records with several track featuring Hunter’s fine vocals. Her final recordings weredone for Federal in 1952.
There were some notable recording debuts in 1946 including Muddy Waters, Lowell Fulson, Amos Milburn, Johnny Shines and Lightnin’ Hopkins. In August 1941, on a field recording expedition sponsored by the Library of Congress and Fisk University, Alan Lomax and John Work set up portable equipment in Waters’ house to record Muddy and other local musicians. Lomax returned with Lewis Jones in 1942 for a second series of recordings. In 1943, Muddy Waters headed to Chicago. In 1946, Muddy recorded some songs for Mayo Williams at Columbia Records were released a year later on the 20th Century label, billed as James “Sweet Lucy” Carter and his Orchestra. Several songs from that session were unreleased at the time including our track, “Hard Day Blues.” Pianist James “Beale Street” Clark recorded several 78’s in 1945-47 under his name (several were never issued) or as Memphis Jimmy. He appears on records by Jazz Gillum, Brother John Sellers, Eddie Boyd, Red Nelson, Homer Harris and on “Jitterbug Blues”, “Hard Day Blues” and “Burying Ground” backed a young Muddy Waters.
At the age of eighteen, Lowell Fulson moved to Oklahoma, and joined Texas Alexander for a few months in 1940, but later moved to California, where he formed a band which soon included a young Ray Charles. Fulson was drafted in 1943 and served in the U.S. Navy until 1945. After a few months back in Oklahoma, he was off to Oakland, CA, where he made his first 78s for producer Bob Geddins in 1946.
By the age of five, Amos Milburn was playing tunes on the piano. He enlisted in the United States Navy when he was fifteen and earned thirteen battle stars in the Philippines. He returned to Houston and organized a sixteen-piece band playing in clubs in the city. Milburn was a polished pianist and performer and in 1946 attracted the attention of a woman who arranged a recording session with Aladdin Records in Los Angeles. Milburn’s relationship with Aladdin lasted eight years, during which he recorded more than 75 sides.
Johnny Shines was taught to play the guitar by his mother and spent most of his childhood in Memphis, playing slide guitar at an early age in juke joints and on the street. He moved to Hughes, Arkansas, in 1932 and worked on farms for three years, putting aside his music career. A chance meeting with Robert Johnson, his main influence, gave him the inspiration to return to music. In 1935, Shines began traveling with Johnson. He made his first recording in 1946 for Columbia Records, but the takes were never released, only to see the light of day decades later.
Lightnin’ Hopkins was working with Texas Alexander n Houston’s Third Ward in 1946 when talent scout Lola Anne Cullum came across them. Cullum dropped Alexander and paired Hopkins with pianist Wilson “Thunder” Smith, signing them to Aladdin records. “Katie May,” cut on November 9, 1946, in L.A. with Smith lending a hand on the 88s, was Lightnin’ Hopkins’ first regional seller of note. He recorded prolifically for Aladdin in both L.A. and Houston into 1948, scoring a national R&B hit for the firm with his “Shotgun Blues.” “Short Haired Woman,” “Abilene,” and “Big Mama Jump,” among many others.
There were several interesting topical blues cut in 1946, several about the end of World War II. On “Sunny Road” Charles Brown opens the song with the lines “Well the war is over/I’m going down that sunny road” and sings about losing his war plant job. Similarly, in “Living In A Different World” Roosevelt Sykes sings: “Jobs gonna be scarce, and that’s gonna be bad/You gonna need that money that you once have had/’Cause this country’s in a whirl/So you see we’re living in a different world.” “Freedom Choo Choo Blues” by Tommie Jenkins was a remarkable protest song, emphasizing that the promises of the Declaration of Independence had been a long time coming for African Americans: “I’ve lived in a restricted district, mostly in a slum/Always kicked around, until my draft card has come.”
There still a number of pre-war veterans kicking around in 1946 including Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup, Johnnie Temple, Buster Bennett , Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red, Jimmie Gordon, Lee Brown, Jazz Gillum. Arthur Crudup, who grew up singing spirituals, did not start playing guitar until he was in his thirties. In 1941, while playing on the streets in Chicago, he was offered a chance to record for RCA Victor’s Bluebird label. He made his debut in 1942 but did not cut any records in 1943. His unique sound and memorable lyrics caught on with record buyers, and he continued to record for RCA until 1954.
Among the horn players in demand in the 30’s and 40’s were Buster Bennett who made his debut in 1938 and his successor Sax Mallard, who hit his stride in the mid-to-late 40’s. Our very first written record of Buster Bennett, who by then was 24 years old and had been playing professionally for at least 8 years, is a one-paragraph blurb in the Chicago Defender, from July 9, 1938. Bennett got his recording start for Lester Melrose in September 1938. He would work the studios with Big Bill Broonzy, Merline Johnson, Monkey Joe and Washboard Sam. He also did two non-Melrose sessions with Jimmie Gordon, under the direction of Sammy Price. A 1945 session with Big Bill was the last session work Buster would before starting a recording career under his own name which began the same year.
In 1935, Johnnie Temple began his recording career, releasing “Louise Louise Blues”, his biggest hit, the following year on Decca Records. Although he never achieved stardom, Temple’s records sold consistently throughout the late 30’s and 40’s. He had another sizable hit with 1938’s “Big Leg Woman.” In 1946 Temple cut some up-to-date sides for King with trumpet, tenor and piano, several of which were only issued decades later. In 1947 he cut an acetate of just himself on guitar for the Ora Nelle label. In 1950 he cut a lone 78 for Miracle and cut some unissued songs
for Chess.
Today’s show is the first of two as we examine the myriad blues songs, mainly from the pre-war era, dealing with love, lust, infidelity, and sex. Unlike some of the other topics we’ve covered, this a broad topic with hundreds of songs dealing with these subjects in all manner of imaginative and clever ways. Over the course of these shows we hear numerous songs of romantic love, songs of infidelity, loss and of course a good dose of raunchy blues numbers, many of which are quite eye-opening in their frankness particularly in these politically correct times. Hopefully listeners will take these songs in the context of the times and not set upon me with pitchforks calling for my cancellation. Along the way I’ll navigate through the lyrics, some of which can’t be adequately described on radio, as we play songs about riders, jockey’s, jelly, pig meat, milk cows, coffee grinders, shaving ’em dry, lead pencils, sweet patunia, the dirty dozens, getting your ashes hauled, churning butter, B.D. Woman, sissy men and much, much more.
Admittedly “Mother Fuyer” isn’t all that clever but it was a way to say mother fucker on record. “Mother Fuyer” was written and recorded by 
Tampa Red’s ‘The Duck Yas Yas Yas” was a “whorehouse tune”, a popular St. Louis party song. The song’s title is explained by quoting the lyrics more fully: “Shake your shoulders, shake ’em fast, if you can’t shake your shoulders, shake your yas-yas-yas”. The song was originally recorded in St. Louis by pianist James “Stump” Johnson in late 1928 or January 1929. Blues singer Tampa Red and Georgia Tom also recorded a version on May 13, 1929. Oliver Cobb recorded the song on August 16, 1929, before he died suddenly the next year. In 1939, Tommy McClennan used some of the lyrics in his song “Bottle It Up and Go”.
