I’ve just returned from the recording studio where we recorded our third Radio Show. Great fun.
Our shows are going out on Hospital Radio. They assure us that if we improve enough they will move the show out of intensive care and put them out to patients in the other wards. So we’ve got something to aim for.
John Peel, unfortunately, we are not. But we are having great fun planning them out, playing the music, talking it through and recording them in the studio.
I though you might like to see the script we produced. When I get the show back I’ll put it up on the blog for you to laugh at.
Opher and Mike’s – 1950’s R&B Radio show
The Meters – Cissy Strut intro
Mike – Today we’re going to focus on the American R&B scene of the fifties and early sixties.
Chris – There was a wealth of great music that was all largely unheard in Britain.
Mike – It was unheard in America too – by white audiences.
Chris – It was produced for the black music market. Young black kids would buy it, dance to it and go and see the artists.
Mike – This was still the age of segregation. White and black were kept apart. There were separate radio stations, record labels, charts and concert halls.
Chris – But that was changing. Alan Freed and other Disc Jockeys had started playing R&B with Rock and Roll in their late fifties shows. And the white kids were going mad for it and buying it by the truckload.
Mike – the walls of segregation were being blown down. Black and white kids were mixing.
Chris – In Britain the Beeb didn’t play it and there were no independent radio stations, so nobody knew about it. All these great artists remained unknown.
Mike – But the merchant seamen who visited the States knew about them and brought records back into the ports of London, Liverpool, Hull and Glasgow.
Chris – those records were snatched up by the emerging bands of the British Merseybeat and Beat scene. They mixed the R&B with Rock ‘n’ Roll to create their own distinctive brand of high energy music.
Mike – But here are the originals – the unsung heroes of the American R&B scene of the fifties and early sixties.
Chris – This is the real stuff.
Mike – If you’re talking about unsung heroes Chris this guy is right at the top of the Pile. Larry Williams was a New Orleans pianist in the tradition of Fats Domino, Huey Piano Smith and, of course, Little Richard. I reckon New Orleans had a secret factory that just produced amazing Rock n roll pianists. He was signed to Specialty Records, Little Richard’s label, and scored several big hits between 1957-58.Bonie Moronie, Dizzy Miss lizzy, Short Fat Fannie and Slow Down.
Chris- Larry had been groomed to take over little Richard’s mantle when Richard decided to give it all up for religion and momentarily it looked as if it was on the cards but after 1958 the hits dried up.
Mike- As his career faltered he became involved with drugs and by 1960 he was serving a prison sentence for narcotic violations, as the Americans so nicely put it.
Chris- The Beatles, especially John Lennon, really rated Larry Williams they recorded several of his songs. Lennon recorded Bad Boy on his Rock n Roll album. However it’s ironic that both Larry Williams and John Lennon both died in 1980 and both died of Gunshot wounds! But just for minute let’s forget all that and remember just what a great performer he was. This is an all-time classic, Slow Down.
Slow Down – Larry Williams
Chris – That was Larry Williams a man with many problems which can’t be said of our next performer Tommy Tucker, yet another blues piano player. Tommy wrote and recorded a song which was an anthem of the sixties, HI Heel Sneakers. Apart from having considerable chart success the song was recorded and performed by almost everybody who was anybody at the time including the Stones but like most artists who find it difficult to follow a massive success Tommy was no exception.
Mike -That’s not quite Chris right the follow up Long Tall Shorty although not as big as sneakers it was well received and a staple in lots of bands repertoire but after that not much happened. This is where Tommy’s fortunes differ from many of his fellow artists instead of going down the road of drug abuse and crime he became a successful real estate agent and newspaper columnist. His cousin Joanne was a female astronaut in a 2006 space shuttle launch.
Chris – Well that makes a change Mike, blues man becomes Estate agent, it’s a bit like Al Capone retiring and becoming a temperance lecturer.
Mike – It didn’t stop all the publicity scandal stories. According to one story he was supposed to have died on tour in England after eating a hamburger!
Chris – So he was a dead estate agent – figures – but it didn’t stop him writing what has become a blues classic and here it is, High Heel Sneakers.
High Heel Sneakers – Tommy Tucker
Mike – well that was Tommy Tucker and this is another of those largely unheralded black American R&B geniuses – Arthur Alexander.
Chris – Arthur Alexander wrote incredible songs, had a voice that was poignant and emotive and arrangements that were brilliant – yet he is still largely unheard of.
Mike – His songs – like Anna – go with him, You better Move on, Shot of Rhythm and Blues, Where have you been (all my life) and You’re the Reason, were covered by the Beatles, Stones, Dusty Springfield, Gerry and the Pacemakers and numerous other bands.
Chris – He had it all, you only have to listen to the incredible arrangement of the songs. But then you judge for yourselves – here’s his version of – You’d better move on.
Arthur Alexander – You better move on
Chris – Hard to follow Arthur Mike – try a bit of Little Willie John.
Mike, – Little Willie John follows the blue print for so many black R N B singers of not only the fifties but even to-day. Willie was one of those gospel trained soul singers that crossed over into blues and R N b. He was first discovered by Johnny Otis remember Ma He’s making eyes at me?
Chris. He had his first hit when he was 18, All around the world, and his biggest one Sleep when he was 23. He went on to co-write and record Fever which was a big hit for Peggy Lee and should have made him a very rich man. He went on to score several more R N B hits but when the hits dried up his life style took a turn for the worse and he was convicted of manslaughter. He died of Pneumonia whilst in prison in 1968.
Mike. It was a tragedy. Willie made the Billboard charts 14 times, Fleetwood Mac had a big hit with Need your love so bad and the Beatles recorded Leave my Kitten alone but it wasn’t enough to save a great talent. He was a great inspiration to many singers that followed him. James Brown recorded a tribute album and among others including the band’s Robbie Robertson paid tribute to him. The song we are going to play is the classic “Need your love so bad”
Little Willy John- Need your love so bad
Chris – That was special. Now Chuck Willis was also special. He was a slick dude whose signature style was to wear a brightly coloured turban.
Mike – He specialised in taking old Blues standards like Betty and Dupree and CC Rider and giving them a smooth R&B treatment that suited the dance styles of the 50s.
Chris – He became known as the King of The Stroll following those early numbers. But it was his more rocked up ‘Hang up my Rock ‘n’ Roll Shoes’ that I liked best.
Mike – He was unlucky. He had a history of stomach ulcers – probably caused by alcohol, and died of peritonitis following an operation. He was just thirty and about to break big.
Chris – The single had just been released when he died. They flipped Hang up my Rock and Roll Shoes to the B-side because they thought the B-side – What am I living for would cash in on his death. He had a big R&B hit with it but I think Rock and Roll shoes would have broken him into the white market and made him bigger still. Who knows what would have followed?
Mike – This is the classic Hang up my Rock and Roll Shoes.
Chuck Willis – Hang up my Rock and Roll Shoes
Chris – Down in the heart of deepest Louisiana, in the midst of the bayous with their Spanish moss, alligators and buttressed Cyprus trees there was a recording studio run by one J D ‘Jay’ Miller.
Mike – it recorded the local artists and released the tracks on the Excello label. The earthy special sound Jay Miller created was called Swamp Blues.
Chris – Slim Harpo was the leading light. I remember getting hold of this album back in the sixties simply called Swamp Blues. It had all these incredible people on it with names like Lonesome Sundown, Lightnin’ Slim, Lazy Lester, Whispering Smith and slim Harpo. It was amazing – like a different world.
Mike – That Swamp Blues sound was based on the Jimmy Reed groove and that churning riff. It was covered by all the major British Blues based Beat groups from the early sixties – the Stones, Kinks, Yardbirds, Who and Them.
Chris – Slim Harpo died of a heart attack in 1970 at the age of just 46. He had a tour planned to Europe. I would have got to see him. The nearest I got was when I was near Baton Rouge I went to visit his grave in Port Allen. It was a big stone sarcophagus all neglected with trees and roots growing out of it. He deserved much better than that. He was a major player.
Mike – Here’s that number that the Stones covered on their first album with that incredible bass bee drone and stinging lead – I’m a King Bee.
Slim Harpo – I’m a King Bee
Chris – Rufus Thomas was a bit of a showman with his capes, bright shorts and theatrical clothes. He came straight out of vaudeville and tried his hand at being a DJ, dancer and compere. He was short and ‘ ‘well built’ and with his bald head cut rather an unusual figure, but he sure could move and had a personality as big as the sun.
Mike – well that’s fitting – early on in his career he recorded for Sam Philips at Sun Studios in Memphis. He did a number called Bear Cat that was a response to Big Mama Thornton’s Hound Dog. He also did Tiger Man.
Chris – But it was his work with Stax in the early sixties that made his name. His first hit with the then Satelite Records – which became Stax – set the company up with a contract with Atlantic. So without Rufus we might not have had Aretha, Otis and all that fabulous soul.
Mike – He recorded a number called ‘The Dog’ in 1960 which was for one of those dance crazes. Then in 1963 he recorded ‘Walking the Dog’.
Chris – And here’s that number that the Stones covered on their first album – ‘Walking the Dog’.
Rufus Thomas – Walking the Dog
Chris – After Little Richard erupted and blazed through the R&B cosmos igniting Rock ‘n’ Roll on the way and then came back down to earth with a gospel thud and gave up Rock ‘n’ Roll for a while, there was a big hole to fill in the Specialty catalogue.
Mike – They tried filling it with all sorts of dynamic R&B acts such as the brilliant Larry Williams and Esquerita. But nobody plugged the hole. They produced great songs but didn’t reach the heights of Little Richard.
Chris – One of those acts was Don and Dewey – Don Sugarcane Harris and Dewey Terry. They were a powerful double vocal blast.
Mike – They produced a number of great songs that went on to be hits for other people such as Farmer John which was covered by the Premiers and ‘I’m leaving it up to you’ by Dale and Grace. The Righteous Brothers covered a couple of their songs so and included them in their act.
Chris – Sonny Bono of Sonny and Cher produced them at Specialty. Here’s a powerful number of theirs that demonstrates that vocal dynamite – Justine
Don and Dewey – Justine
Mike -Esquerita, real name Eskew Reeder, was one of music’s nearly men, he recorded some great music but made very little impression on the charts. He was a friend of Little Richard both of them were gay, although there was no hint of a relationship.
Chris- It’s always been thought that Esquerita influenced Little Richard. He was a very flamboyant character both his appearance and his wild playing style obviously had an effect on Richard. He had this amazingly huge hairstyle all greased and combed up into a big pompadour that Little Richard copied. In fact Little Richard’s whole act seemed to be based on Esquerita.
Mike – I think that’s true. Little Richard wasn’t always the performer that we know him as, in his early days his style was a lot more reserved if you listen to his very first recordings he was a lot more mellow.
Chris – It was during the recording of Tutti Fruiti that it all changed. Richard had been recording with Art Rupe at Speciality Records and things hadn’t been going too well so they went out for a break and drink. It was during this break that Richard jumped up on the piano and played a faster X rated version of Tutti Fruiti. Rupe saw immediately that if they recorded a cleaned up version of the song and used Richard’s arrangement they were onto a winner, and he was right. From then on the influence of Esquerita in his appearance and performances was obvious.
Mike-The other side of the coin was in spite of his flamboyant appearances and some great Rock n Roll records he never made it. He recorded for several major labels but his only album release came on Capitol Records in 1958, that was when he adopted the name Esquerita. Over the years he worked with many important musicians and singers including Dr John and Jimi Hendrix. He also recorded a session for Berry Gordy at Tamla Motown but the recordings never saw the light of day. His career never seemed to get off the ground and changing his name to The Great Malochi in 1968 wasn’t a good career move. By the early eighties he was working in a car wash. He died in 1985 of an Aids related illness a sad end to a performer who could have been Rock n Roll star!
Chris – Mick Jones of the Clash recorded a song called Esquerita with his band Big Audio Dynamite and Adam and the Ants recorded a song Miss Thing as a tribute. I think it’s time to listen Esquerita as I’m sure for a lot of you it’ll be the first time you’ve heard him and you’re in for a treat, this is “ Hole in the Heart.”
Esquerita – Hole in my heart
Chris – well we had to put a couple of Doo-Wop numbers in because the style was such an important ingredient of the 1950s R&B scene, and it had such an impact on Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Mike – It was very popular in the big northern cities – Detroit, Chicago and New York, where a lot of the blacks had migrated after the war in search of work after mechanisation had driven them off the land.
Chris – That was probably because the music was created a capella. It didn’t need instruments at all. The important ingredient was the blending of the four or five voices. It came straight out of the African tradition. It wasn’t at all unusual to find groups of young guys standing on street corners in Harlem practising their songs and moves or busking.
Mike – The Clovers had been going since shortly after the war, forming in 1946. They had a number of big R&B hits like Lovey Dovey, Good lovin’, One mint julep, and Fool, Fool Fool, but it wasn’t until the late fifties that they had their big cross-over into the white charts.
Chris – Doo-wop had become a major part of the Rock ‘n’ Roll scene. Leiber and Stoller were major writers of Rock ‘n’ Roll and had produced a great swathe of hits for Elvis and the Coasters. It was when then recorded a Lieber and Stoller song that they really hit the heights.
Mike – so let’s there their 1959 version of Love Potion Number 9.
Clovers – Love Potion No. 9
Mike – That was The Clovers with a Leiber and Stoller song and the next song is another of their incredible collection; Young Blood by The Coasters. The Coasters bring back memories of that long hot summer of 1959 Chris. Charlie Brown and Along Came Jones blasting out of the PA at Butlin’s Holday Camp in Filey where I was working at the time, great days, great music.
Chris – The Coasters’ comic vocals, plus the writing and production of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller resulted in a string of wisecracking Doo- Wop hits in the late fifties. They’d originated in the late forties as a Los Angeles vocal group as The Robins and in 1954 had scored with Riot in Cell block no 9 and Smokey Joe’s Cafe.
Mike – It was Smokey Joe’s cafe that attracted Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records. A change of name followed and by the last years of the fifties they were the most popular black Rock n Roll group in America. Hits like, Searchin,’ Young Blood, Poison Ivy Yakety Yak cemented their place in pop history and it’s amazing how many of these were covered by British bands in the sixties. The Hollies did Searchin,’ the Stones did Poison Ivy I can’t remember how many have covered Young Blood.
Chris – After the hits dried up they worked the oldies circuit. However ex members seem to have had more than their fare share of tragedy. King Curtis, the band’s sax player was stabbed to death outside his apartment. Cornelius Gunter, a later member, was shot to death in his car but probably the most unfortunate was Nate Wilson who, after a row with his manager, was shot and his body dismembered and left in a dustbin.
Mike – Out of 16 ex members only 4 are still alive it seems to me if you went for an audition with the Coasters apart from a good voice you’d better make sure that you had a good life insurance policy! But even if, sadly, many members of the band didn’t survive their songs certainly did and this is one of their most popular Young Blood
Young Blood – The Coasters
Chris- Sam Cooke followed the well-trodden route of black vocalists from gospel to pop. He left his Gospel group the Soul Stirrers to find massive success as a solo artist with hits such as You Send me, Only Sixteen and Wonderful World, Bring it on home to me, Shake and Chain gang just to name a few.
Mike – Sam was more than just a singer he owned his own record label, publishing company and management firm which for black people in America at this time, while not unheard of, was a rare occurrence.
Chris. But like all black artists at this time Sam had to battle against prejudice and this is reflected in the circumstances surrounding his death. He was shot in a Los Angeles Motel in December 1964 by a woman who claimed he attacked her but there are all kinds of stories as to what happened. Ike Turner claimed Sam was set up robbed and killed but the LAPD who were notoriously racist weren’t interested, as far as they were concerned it was just another blackman killed in an unfortunate incident and it was justifiable homicide. Etta James who claimed that she saw Cooke’s body in his coffin said his injuries just didn’t fit with the official version as his hands were crushed and his head was nearly separated from his shoulders.
Mike. I don’t suppose that we’ll ever know the truth but even after his death Sam’s music has been a massive influence on such people as Michael Jackson, Otis Redding and Rod Stewart. His songs are still played on the radio and recorded by other artists. This song is one of his last and probably his best. I don’t know how you feel about that Chris? It shows how much Sam was involved in the Civil Rights struggle in the early sixties and when it was released it was very controversial. This is A Change is Gonna Come.
A Change is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke.
Chris – Now – to follow on with the same smooth style I think we ought to go with a real soft crooner, don’t you Mike? – someone like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.
Mike – Well Jalacy Hawkins certainly had a voice but I’m not so sure he was a crooner, Chris.
Chris – You’re right Mike – I’m not sure what he was. He was a one off. A no hit wonder. A man with an operatic voice, a large frame and a capacity to outrage. A man who put shock in Rock and humour and voodoo. A boxer, and once middle-weight champion of Alaska, who knocked Rock for six.
Mike – everybody thinks of ‘I put a spell on you’ when they think of Screamin Jay.
Chris – If they think of him at all.
Mike – It is amazing to think that ‘I put a spell on you’ reputedly sold a million copies but was never a hit for him, even in the R&B charts.
Chris – That’s probably because it was universally banned. The white establishment thought that it was so earthy, overtly sexual and outrageous that they didn’t want all those pure young white girls being exposed to it.
Mike – But it was his stage act that was as outrageous as his repertoire. He used to dress up in leopard skins, capes and big colourful hats back in the early fifties.
Chris – Allen Freed took it a stage further. He billed him as the Wild Man Of Rock and paid him to burst out of a coffin on stage.
Mike – He played up to that and went for it big style – a bone through his nose, plastic snakes, ju-ju beads, voodoo paraphernalia and even a skull. It was humour in one sense but back then it must have scared the living daylights out of a young white audience to suddenly have a big black man with wide eyes, in a leopard skin, wielding spears, snakes and skulls bursting out of a coffin. We’ve got used to things now but back in the staid fifties it really was a shock.
Chris – there was a bit of a racial stereotype that Jay played up to.
Mike – but what a voice. And that production and backing.
Chris – He was way ahead of his time. One of the most eccentric performers and some of the sounds he managed to get back in the fifties must have pushed recording studios to their limit.
Mike – Here’s an example from the fifties that demonstrates all that voodoo theme and incredible fifties production – Alligator Wine.
Screaming Jay Hawkins – Alligator Wine
Mike- Lazy Lester was born Leslie Johnson in 1933 in Louisiana. His produce gave him the Lazy Lester name because he thought he was so laid back
Chris- It was a chance meeting with Lightning Slim, back in the 1950s, who offered him a job playing harmonica that introduced him to Jay Miller who was to become his producer and song writing partner. Lazy recorded with many of Miller’s Excello label artists, including Slim Harpo and Lightning Slim, but Miller wouldn’t let him record with his country singers because he was coloured, he thought it would harm the sales of the records.
Mike- That’s right Chris but as he had to teach the artists how to play on those records in the end they told Miller to let him play as it would save time and money. Apart from his own R N B hits, and a must for every British beat group of the sixties I’m a lover not a fighter, he also wrote I hear you knocking. That was a for huge hit for Smiley Lewis and much later Dave Edmunds as well as being recorded by countless others over the years. Lester claims his name was either left off the composing credits of his songs or they were shared with producer Miller and as was usual at this time with black acts he received little or no royalties. I hear you knocking would have made him a millionaire!
Chris – Understandably he became disillusioned and left the business only to be rediscovered in the 70s. He made albums with the likes of Jimmy Vaughn, Stevie Ray’s brother, and was able to make a living again playing music touring both in the USA and Europe. Martin Scorcese included him in a blues tribute at New York’s Radio City Music hall, he was featured on the soundtrack album and the film “Lightning in a Bottle” with BB King, Solomon Burke, Aerosmith, John Fogerty and the wonderfully named Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown.
Mike – He was inducted into the blues Hall of Fame in 2012 and he now lives in California with his partner, Slim Harpo’s sister Pike. I bet this brings back some memories Chris this is Lazy Lester with I’m a lover not a fighter.
I’m a lover not a fighter. Lazy lester
Chris – so much we missed on on this one Mike.
Mike – Yep – we could have done a whole week on this one. So much good stuff.
Chris – we’ll save it for another day.
- Meters – Missy Strut – Theme tune