Part IVc: Postwar Blues:
Name Birth Year Death Year
Clarence Garlow (February 27, 1911 – July 24, 1986) was an American R&B, jump blues, Texas blues and cajun guitarist, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his recording of the song "Bon Ton Roula", which was a hit single on the US Billboard R&B chart in 1950. One commentator noted the track as, "a rhythm and blues laced-zydeco song that helped introduce the Louisiana music form to a national audience."
Garlow died in July 1986 in Beaumont, aged 75.
Clarence Garlow 1911 1986
Larry Garner is an American blues musician. He was born in 1952 and grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He first performed in the evenings while holding a regular job at Dow Chemical, but he became much bigger after breaking out at a Blues festival in the UK in 1992. He recorded for Verve for a few years, and now records for the German label Ruf Records.
Garner’s first inspiration being the guitar-playing preacher Reverend Utah Smith. Garner made acquaintance with local musicians such as Lonesome Sundown, Silas Hogan, Guitar Kelley and Tabby Thomas. His musical influences include Hogan, Clarence Edwards, Jimi Hendrix, and Henry Gray. He was taught to play guitar by his uncle and two other elders. Garner completed military service in Korea and returned to Baton Rouge, working part-time in music and full-time at a Dow Chemical plant.
Garner won the International Blues Challenge in 1988, and his first two albums, Double Dues and Too Blues, were released by the British JSP label. The latter album's title was an in reply to a label executive who judged Garner's original demo to be "too blues". Thomas' nightclub, Tabby's Blues Box, provided Garner with a playing base in the 1980s and gave him the subject matter for the strongest song on Double Dues, "No Free Rides".
You Need to Live a Little (1996) was followed by Standing Room Only (1998), Baton Rouge (1999) and 2000's Once Upon the Blues. Baton Rouge''s 1999 track, "Go To Baton Rouge," offered a tourist's guide to Louisiana music spots.
In 2008, Garner was treated for a serious illness that was the inspiration for his 2008 album, Here Today Gone Tomorrow.
Larry Garner 1952
JAMES HARMAN (1946.06.08/Anniston, AL - ) is one of the leading white harmonica players on America’s west coast. Harman’s love of the instrument was instilled in him by his father. His father’s Hohner harmonicas were in the piano bench, and he would play them after his piano lessons. He experimented with other instruments as well, including guitar, organ, bass and drums, performing solo and with family members at dances and country suppers. He found the blues early in life, both on black radio and on the street corner: “Radio” Johnson, a local blind street singer who played slide guitar with a knife, was an early influence and collaborator.
As a youngster in Alabama, James played with a local blues musician named Radio Johnson, and bought R&B records. By the age of 16 he had launched his own band and subsequently recorded a number of singles and albums with various ensembles, including Soul Senders, Snake doctor, King James and The Royals, the Icehouse Blues Band and Icepick James and The Rattlesnakes. In 1970 Harman moved to southern California and had to abandon music for some years due to health problems. He did not refrain from playing music for long, and in the late 70s he formed the James Harman Band, going on to make acclaimed recordings for the Rivera and Rhino labels before graduating to Black Top Records at the start of the 90s. He recorded some of his best studio work for this label, including 1991’s Do Not Disturb and 1995’s Black & White. Later recordings have appeared on the Cannonball and Pacific Blue labels. Harman, who by the start of the new millennium resembled Gandalf (from Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings) with his extraordinary white beard, is an imposing sight to watch perform. He is a fine singer and harmonica player whose approach to the blues is one of fun and enjoyment.
Harman’s professional career began in 1962 after moving to Panama City, FL. Soon after the move, he discovered like-minded friends, who invited him to black nightclubs to see such performers as Little Junior Parker, Jimmy Reed, Little Milton Campbell, Slim Harpo, Bobby Bland, O.V. Wright, B.B. King, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Joe Tex and James Carr. He began hanging out on a regular basis and was eventually asked to sit in by local house bands, becoming known as “that boy who sings like a man.” Encouraged by this acceptance, Harman launched the first of his many rhythm ‘n’ blues ensembles, using such names as King James and the Royals; Snake doctor; Disciples of Soul; Disciples of Blues; The Disciples; Voo Doo Daddy; Soul Senders; Pieces of Eight; Kingsnakes; and finally, The Icehouse Blues Band.
The buzz surrounding James’ live shows attracted talent scouts from several southern record companies. Earl Caldwell, manager of the Swinging Medallions, signed Harman and took him to the Ken-Tel recording studio on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, GA. In 1964, 18-year-old James cut the first of nine regional 45 RPM singles that would appear on five different labels and put him on the road. James toured the eastern half of the country for the rest of the decade, playing radio station dances, fraternity parties, nightclubs, college concerts, after-hours joints, striptease parlors, bottle clubs (in which Harman would play all night, literally, performing six to eight sets of music) and honky tonks. When he wasn’t headlining his own show, he was opening for and/or backing the top R&B artists of the day.
During the mid 1960s, Harman relocated to Chicago, New York, Miami, and New Orleans, in efforts to find a home for his music. For various reasons, these moves didn’t work: In Chicago, the club scene was sewn up tight by Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Charlie Musselwhite and Paul Butterfield. Also, the Windy City, like New York, was just too cold for a Southerner. New Orleans was a violent place, and its music scene at the time consisted of “47 bands on Bourbon Street playing ‘Proud Mary,’” Harman recalls, and a ghetto club scene devoted to R&B and soul music. His recorded work seemed to be of no help. Harman did enjoy some success in Miami. He played free “love-ins” from the backs of flatbed trucks for large crowds of hippies, by day. By night, he played such clubs as the Climax or the Jet-Away Lounge. At the latter, he was the first white act to perform and one of the very first to do so with a racially integrated band. Still, opportunities in Miami were limited; even with a history of recording and touring. All that most local bands could hope for was an opening slot on a larger show.
So, in 1970, at the advise of his fellow record collector friends, Canned Heat’s Bob Hite, Alan Wilson and Henry Vestine, Harman moved to southern California. Within a month, Harman was performing at the Golden Bear, Troubadour, Ash Grove and Lighthouse, where he and his band were able to play real blues for real blues audiences. Almost immediately, Harman connected with a small community of kindred spirits, such as Rod Piazza, who was leading the band Bacon Fat, Kim “Goleta Slim” Wilson and John “Juke” Logan of the band Brother Chaos. Collectively, these four performers and their bands backed and/or opened for the last great blues artists of an earlier era, both those who lived in the Los Angeles area or visited it while on tour. The “Icehouse Blues Band” featuring James Harman” played one- to six-night stints with the likes of Big Joe Turner, John Lee Hooker, Freddie King, Muddy Waters, Albert King, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Lloyd Glenn, Lowell Fulsom, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Johnny “Guitar” Watson and Albert Collins. The disco and urban cowboy fads of the late ’70s nearly killed club work for blues musicians. Two bouts with bleeding ulcers and two painful divorces almost killed Harman himself! But in 1977 he rebounded to form a new band, with his old piano player, Gene Taylor, using his own name for the first time.
The James Harman Band has been a touchstone for notable players, including Phil Alvin and Bill Bateman, who left in 1978 to form the Blasters; “Piano Gene” Taylor, who left in 1981, also to join the Blasters before moving on to the Fabulous Thunderbirds; and David “Kid” Ramos. Ramos played 10 years with Harman, retiring in 1988, return to the blues as guitarist for the Fabulous Thunderbirds, for a time. Alumni also include the late Michael “Hollywood Fats” Mann, who played five years with James after leaving his own band in 1980; multi-instrumentalist session man and tunesmith Jeff Turmes played saxophones with James for years, switching to the bass for six more years beginning in 1988. Alumni drummers include Richard Innes, Stephen T. Hodges and Steve Mugalian and Paul Fasulo to name a few. Along the way, Harman’s own production company: Icepick Productions, has generated more than a dozen releases to add to the fifteen he had released before using his own name. These twenty nine releases are the fruit of his forty plus year career, at this point. While Harman continues to perform and record, he also is working on several projects as a producer, a venture that involves longtime production partner Jerry Hall. The pair has worked together since 1971. Hall has engineered every track of every Harman release since that time, and together the pair has produced many other artists.
Meanwhile, seventeen songs from James Harman’s releases have been featured in films and television, the most famous being “Kiss of Fire” (from Those Dangerous Gentlemen), which was the background for the infamous rape scene in “The Accused” (starring Jodie Foster). James’ “Jump My Baby” (from Thank You Baby) has been in three different movies, including “Burning Love.” Harman has received 14 W.C. Handy Blues Award nominations, for his songs on his own releases and for other artists albums, such as his friend and alumni “Kid” Ramos. Through the years Harman has received several Handy nominations for “Blues Song of the Year”, “Blues Single of the Year” and even “Re-release of the Year” for the CD reissue of his landmark 1987 album, “Extra Napkins”. James Harman has been inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame and won the “Best Blues Album of the Year” award, from Canada’s Real Blues Magazine.
Harman has performed live shows in 18 countries, as many as 250 dates per year, including appearances at such North American festivals as the Long Beach Blues Festival, the New York State Blues Festival, the Kansas City Blues and Jazz Heritage Festival, the King Biscuit Festival in Helena, AR, the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, the Bayfront Blues Festival in Duluth, MN, the Waterfront Festival in Portland, OR, the Edmonton (Canada) Blues Festival, and other festivals from Montreal to Mexico City. Abroad, Harman has appeared at the Peer and Spring Blues Festivals in Belgium, the Notodden and Hell Festivals in Norway, the Great Britain R&B Festival in Colne, England, the Milano and Pistoia Festivals in Italy and the Bayron Bay Festival in Australia, to name a few.
In more than four decades of touring and recording, Harman has staked his claim as an original, legitimate blues artist, musician and producer. In his recordings and live performances, James creates music that stands out as unique and personal yet clearly reflects his passion for the roots of the blues. Harman learned a key secret years ago: You have to develop your own approach and identity in order to have lasting success. As vocalist, musician and songwriter, James Harman chronicles life with energy, wit and humor. He has a novelist’s eye for detail and irony, and the result is well-conceived music that stands the test of time. Harman’s roots are apparent in his recordings and live performances. He is a disciple of the classic qualities of the Southern blues tradition. Still, like his mentors, Harman is telling his own stories. He knows the difference between innovation and imitation, and his own character as a blues artist is fully reflected in his work. In all cases, he remains true to his credo: strictly the blues.
James Harman 1946
Wynonie “Mr. Blues” Harris (August 24, 1915-June 14, 1969) was an American blues shouter and rhythm and blues singer.
He was born in Omaha, Nebraska. Harris traveled as a singer and dancer with the Lucky Millinder Big Band in his youth. His first big solo hit was in 1944 with his record “Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well”. He was a dynamic live performer who brought a lot of attention to the emerging styles of rhythm and blues.
Harris made a major contribution to the birth of rock and roll when he covered “Good Rocking Tonight”, written and originally recorded by Roy Brown. Brown’s version was a jump blues with a jazz rhythm section. Harris’s cover version was much more frantic and played with a much stronger back beat. In effect, Harris, a black artist, had done what many white artists were to do later. He had turned blues into rock and roll and made one of the first rock and roll records. The song was later covered by Elvis Presley.
Harris recorded for many labels and in 1947, had a hit on Aladdin Records with “Wynonie’s Blues”, featuring Illinois Jacquet on tenor sax. His greatest success came at King Records where he was the leading male solo artist. “All She Wants to do Is Rock” went to Number One on the R&B charts. Many of his songs were novelty numbers, like “(Don’t Roll Those) Bloodshot Eyes (at Me)”, “Good Morning, Judge”, and “I Love my Baby’s Pudding”, and his last hit, “Loving Machine”.
Harris’ severe alcoholism resulted in his career going into a tailspin in the mid-1950s. While other blues shouters of his generation such as Big Joe Turner were able to maintain their popularity despite changing styles, and Presley’s cover versions brought his songs to a whole new audience, Harris fell into obscurity. He recorded little after 1956 and nothing after 1960. Harris’ last public appearance was as a guest performer at a Motortown Revue concert at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California in 1966, which was universally considered to be a disaster (according to author Nick Tosches’ article on Harris in Cream magazine, collected in Tosches’ Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll).
Harris died of throat cancer on June 14, 1969.
Wynonie Harris 1915 1969
Duke Henderson (died 1972), born Sylvester C. Henderson, was an American blues shouter and jazz singer in the mid-1940s. His styles included West Coast blues and jump blues. In the late 1940s he renounced his past and began broadcasting as a minister and gospel DJ. He eventually became a preacher.
In 1945 Henderson made his debut recordings with the New York based Apollo label. Jack McVea recommended Henderson to the label, and he was backed on the recording dates by several notable Los Angeles session musicians. These included McVea, Wild Bill Moore and Lucky Thompson (saxophones), Gene Phillips (guitar), Shifty Henry and Charlie Mingus (bass violin), plus Lee Young and Rabon Tarrant (drums). The recordings were not a commercial success and Henderson lost his recording contract with Apollo.
In 1947 Al "Cake" Wichard recorded for Modern Records billed as the Al Wichard Sextette, and featured vocals by Henderson. Henderson subsequently recorded material for a number of labels over several years. His work was released by Globe, Down Beat, Swing Time, Specialty ("Country Girl" b/w "Lucy Brown", October 1952), Modern, and Imperial. Henderson ended up at Flair Records, where his 1953 release, "Hey Mr. Kinsey", was billed as recorded by Big Duke, and displayed a knowledge of the then current thinking on human sexual activity.
Later in the decade, Henderson renounced his past, and commenced broadcasting on XERB billed as Brother Henderson. His ministrial gospel DJ career there was short-lived, although the radio station was later utilized by Wolfman Jack. In the late 1950s Henderson broadcast with KPOP in Los Angeles. After his DJ career, Henderson went on to become a preacher.
In February 1959 Billboard reported that Proverb Records was being jointly formed by Brother Henderson. By 1964 its subsidiary label, Gospel Corner, was initiated.
Henderson died in Los Angeles in 1972.
In 1994 Delmark issued a compilation CD, containing 20 tracks from Henderson's late 1945 Apollo recordings.
Duke Henderson unknown 1972
Louis Jordan (July 8, 1908 - February 4, 1975) was a pioneering African-American jazz and rhythm & blues musician and songwriter who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as “The King of the Jukebox”, Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the later years of the swing era.
Jordan was one of the first black recording artists whose popularity crossed over into the mainstream white audience and who scored hits on both the “race” charts and the mainstream white pop charts. He is now acknowledged as one of the most successful African-American musicians of the 20th century, ranking fifth in the list of the all-time most successful black recording artists.
Jordan scored at least four million-selling hits during his career, regularly topping the “race” charts, as well as scoring simultaneous Top Ten hits on the white pop charts on several occasions. Many of the songs he wrote or co-wrote have become 20th century popular music classics.
With his dynamic Tympany Five bands (which also pioneered the use of electric guitar and electric organ) Jordan largely mapped out the main parameters of the classic R&B, urban blues and early rock’n’roll genres with a series of hugely influential 78 rpm discs for the Decca label that presaged virtually all of the dominant black music styles of the 1950s and 1960s and which exerted a huge influence on many leading performers in these genres.
Louis Jordan 1908 1975
Booker T. Laury grew up with Memphis Slim and the two are good friends. Consequently, his piano style has much of the same barrelhouse sound as Slim’s. Laury has stayed in Memphis, however, playing in the same clubs his entire life. Although some foreign albums were released, he had no domestic full-length. Therefore, Bullseye Blues released Nothin’ but the Blues, with Laury’s voice and piano the only instruments on the record.
Booker T. Laury 1914 1995
Little Willie Littlefield (born September 16, 1931, El Campo, Texas, United States) is an American R&B pianist and singer
Littlefield’s recording and his subsequent releases were not successful, although he remained a popular club act in the San Francisco area.
In the late 1970s he toured Europe successfully, later settling in the Netherlands and releasing a number of albums for the Blues Connoisseur label. Littlefield built a considerable European reputation with his vigorous boogie-woogie piano playing and smoky singing.
He continues to perform occasionally, mainly at festivals. In 2008 he played at the 20th Burnley Blues Festival and in July 2009 at the 5th annual UK Boogie Woogie Festival at Sturminster Newton in Dorset. Having appeared at Shakedown Blues Club, at Castor Hall, near Castor, Peterborough in 2006, Littlefield made a return appearance in October 2010.
Little Willie Littlefield 1931
Willie Love (November 4, 1906 – August 19, 1953) was an American Delta blues pianist. He is best known for his association with, and accompaniment of Sonny Boy Williamson II.
Love was born in Duncan, Mississippi, and in 1942, he met Sonny Boy Williamson II in Greenville, Mississippi. They played regularly together at juke joints throughout the Mississippi Delta. Love was influenced by the piano playing of Leroy Carr, and adept at both standard blues and boogie-woogie styling.
In 1947 Charley Booker moved to Greenville, where he worked with Love. Two years later, Oliver Sain also relocated to Greenville to join his stepfather, Love, as the drummer in a band fronted by Williamson. When Williamson recorded for Trumpet Records in March 1951, Love played the piano on the recordings. Trumpet’s owner, Lillian McMurray, had Love return the following month, and again in July 1951, when Love recorded his best known number, the self-penned, “Everybody’s Fishing.” Love played piano and sang, while the accompanying guitar come from Elmore James and Joe Willie Wilkins. His backing band was known as the Three Aces. A further studio session in December 1951 had Love backed by Little Milton (guitar), T.J. Green (fiddle), and Junior Blackman (drums).In his teenage years, Eddie Shaw played tenor saxophone with both Milton and Love.
Under his own name, Love did not return to the studio until March 1953, when he cut “Worried Blues” and “Lonesome World Blues.” Oddly, despite the friendship between them, Love did not utilize Williamson’s playing on any of his own material. In April 1953, Love and Williamson recorded in Houston, Texas, but it was Love’s final recording session.
Love played piano on Williamson’s albums, I Ain’t Beggin’ Nobody and Clownin’ With The World (1953). All of Love’s own recordings appeared on the compilation album, Greenville Smokin’, issued in 2000.
After suffering the effects of years of heavy drinking, Love died of bronchopneumonia, in August 1953, at the age of 46. He was interred at the Elmwood Cemetery in Jackson, Mississippi.
Willie Love 1906 1953
Percy Mayfield (12 August 1920 - 11 August 1984) was an American singer & songwriter famous for the songs “Hit the Road, Jack” and “Please Send Me Someone to Love”.He was known as “Poet Laureate of the Blues”.
Mayfield was born in Minden, Louisiana. As a youth, he showed a talent for poetry, so he thought he would try songwriting and singing. He began his performing career in Texas and had moved to Los Angeles by 1942.
He auditioned his song “Two Years of Torture” to Supreme Records (a Los Angeles-area record label) because he thought it would be a good song for Jimmy Witherspoon. The label liked his performance and asked him to record it in 1947. Although his vocal style was influenced by such stylists as Charles Brown, Mayfield did not focus on the white market as did many West Coast bluesmen. Rather, he sang blues ballads, mostly his own songs, in a gentle vocal style.
In 1950, he signed with Specialty Records and released several well-received R&B records. His most famous performance: “Please Send Me Someone to Love” was a number one R&B hit in 1950. His career continued to blossom with songs like “Strange Things Happening”, “Lost Love,” “What a Fool I Was,” “Prayin’ for Your Return,” “Cry Baby,” and “Big Question.” A 1953 auto accident left him seriously injured, including a facial disfigurement that limited his performing.
Mayfield’s songs tend to be downbeat and his lyrics tend to be heartbreaking, but his vulnerability and emotional sensitivity prevent songs like “Life Is Suicide” and “The River’s Invitation” from being maudlin.
Mayfield continued to write and record for Specialty until 1954 and then recorded for Chess Records and the Imperial label. In the early 1960s, he became one of Ray Charles’s favorite songwriters, writing classic songs such as “Hit the Road Jack”, “At the Club”, and “Danger Zone” (which has the same melody of “Please Send Me Someone to Love”. Charles signed Mayfield to his Tangerine logo in 1962.
When Mayfield died of a heart attack in 1984, at the age of 63, he had fallen back into obscurity.
Mayfield hit his creative peak in the years before his music became a mainstream sound. Thus it was always a struggle to gain recognition that he was due. But available examples of his music demonstrate his writing and performing talent and his enormous influence on other performers
Percy Mayfield 1920 1984
Sources (www.last.fm.com, www.google.com, www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
Here we are once again; we’ve come to the end of another very exciting post full of blues artists or should I refer to them as “BLUES LEGENDS” with their myriad of accomplishments. These artists may not be as well known as most, but have certainly left their mark on the American Delta-Blues industry.
I’ll continue this section (Part IVd: Postwar Blues) on the remaining Postwar Blues artists as I gather more information and photos to share with you. Meanwhile, as always, I hope you found this post enjoyable and educational.
Until next time ~ ~ ~
Musician By Night . . .
No comments:
Post a Comment