THE HISTORY OF
New Orleans
Rhythm & Blues
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The History of New Orleans Rhythm & Blues Vol. 9 1958 Whirlaway 1.
Whirlaway
Al Tousan
RCA 7192 Jan 1958
2.
Sea Cruise
Frankie Ford
Ace 554 1958 (14)
3.
Don't You Just Know It
Huey 'Piano' Smith & His Clowns
Ace 545 1958 (9)
RP, ART, CW
4.
My Girl Across Town
Lester Robinson & The Upsetters
Montel 1001 1958
The Upsetters
5.
Bad Boy
Larry Williams
Specialty 658 Aug 1958
EP
6.
Arabian Love Call
Art Neville
Specialty 656 Sep 1958
7.
Feeling Alright On Saturday Night
The Velvetiers
Ric 958 1958
8.
Oh,Oh
Eddie Bo
Checker 1698 May 1958
EB, RC, CW
9.
Flat Foot Sam
TV Slim (Oscar Wills)
Argo 5277 Jul 1957
RP, ART, PG, JA, FF, CW
10.
Honeycomb
Edgar Blanchard
Unreleased 1958
11.
Pig Tails And Ribbons
Leonard Carbo
Vee-Jay 291 1958
ART, EF, RM, FF, CW
12.
Hattie Malatti
Lee Diamond & The Upsetters
Vee-Jay 272 1958
The Upsetters
13.
Loud Mouth Annie
Big Boy Myles
Argo 5326 Jun 1958
RP, JR, WM, EB, RC, CW
14.
Don't You Know Yokomo
Huey 'Piano' Smith & His Clowns
Ace 553 1958 (56)
RP, ART, CW
15.
Can't Let You Go, I Love You So
Albert Scott
Vin 1005 1958
16.
Only Sixteen
Tal Miller
Hollywood 1086 1958
17.
Walkin' With Mr Lee
Lee Allen & His Band
Ember 1027 1957
18.
She's Mine All Mine
Eddie Lang
Ron 324 Oct 1958
MR
19.
Dizzy, Miss Lizzy
Larry Williams
Specialty 626 Feb 1958
EP
20.
Everytime I See You
Harry Lee
Vin 1007 1958
21.
I Don't Want To Lose Her
Leonard Carbo
Unissued May 1958
22.
Lottie-Mo
Lee Dorsey
Valiant 10011 1958
ART, HB, RM, CB,
23.
High Blood Pressure
Huey 'Piano' Smith & His Clowns
Ace 545 1958
RP, ART, CW
24.
Roberta
Frankie Ford
Ace 554 1958 (14)
25.
You Can't Stop Her
Bobby Marchan
Ace 557 1958
ART, HS,
26.
Everybody's Carried Away
Earl King
Ace 564 1958
LA, RP, ART, HS, RC, CW
27.
Pleadin'
Mercy Baby
Ric 955 1957
28.
Whole Lotta Lovin'
Fats Domino
Imperial 5553 Sep 1958
DB, CF, EM,WN, FF, CW
29.
Shirley
John Fred
Montel 1002 Sep 1958
DB, CF, EM,WN, FF, CW
30.
Darling
Charles 'Hungry' Williams
Checker 866 Mar 1957
PG
31.
Java
Al Tousan
RCA 1767 Feb 1958
32.
Poinciana
Ahmad Jamal Trio
Argo 5306
The History of New Orleans Rhythm & Blues 1955-1962 Were it not for the son of an Italian-American grocer named Cosimo Matassa, the New Orleans music scene as we know it may not have happened. At the age of eighteen, Matassa persuaded his father to start selling electrical appliances and records in the family grocery store, and before long they had a successful shop by the name of J&M Music on their hands. Despite the presence of a thriving live music scene, New Orleans was without a recording studio. Matassa’s business acumen led him to purchase the required equipment and J&M Recording Studios was set up in a little room in the back of the shop on the corner of North Rampart and Dumaine Street in 1951. It was the only studio in town during the whole of the classic era and almost all of the great New Orleans records were recorded in its ten-by-twelvefoot room, until he moved to larger premises in 1955. Mac Rebennack (Dr. John) describes what became known as the ‘Cosimo Sound’: “Strong drums, heavy bass, light piano, heavy guitar and light horns...with the guitar, the baritone and tenor doubling the bass line.” The J&M studio house band has rightly become as famous as the studio’s owner. Classic line-ups included Lee Allen, Alvin Tyler, Clarence Hall and Herb Hardesty on saxes, Edward Franks or Salvador Doucette on piano, Ernest McLean, Walter Nelson and Justin Adams on guitar, Frank Fields on bass and Earl Palmer or Charles Williams on drums. Lew Chudd’s Imperial Records Imperial had been rolling out the hits since 1949 and Smiley Lewis was there from the start. His career stretched from 1947 to 1965 yet I Hear You Knocking was his only big hit. Smiley’s own recording of One Night (Of Sin) was a New Orleans bolero shuffle; but when Elvis recorded it a couple of years later, the beat was straightened out and the song rearranged in the doo-wop style, resulting in a worldwide hit. Shame Shame Shame was cut in August 1956 and was included on the soundtrack to the Hollywood
black comedy Baby Doll. Dave Bartholomew was Imperial’s producer and A&R rep: “We just couldn’t get Smiley started. He always had the best material. His records would sell great all around New Orleans, but we just couldn’t break him nationally like everyone else.” One of the best records Smiley made after leaving Imperial was the 1962 OKeh issue, I'm Coming Down With The Blues. He died 4 years later after a struggle against stomach cancer. Dave Bartholomew gets into the carnival mood with Shrimp & Gumbo, a paion to the iconic Creole dish, but perhaps the best record he ever made was a remarkably stark, single-chord, philosophical rap sung to a rolling drumbeat and little else. He recalled the circumstances which led him to record Monkey Speaks His Mind: “I was in the Dallas airport, rushing to catch a plane. Lady handed me this envelope and said ‘Read this, it could make a good song’. I put it in my pocket. Weeks later opened it up, read it and thought, what is this? Let me try.” He had never met the woman before nor seen her since and he had no idea how she came to recognize him. He was never able to resolve the mystery. Monkey is a prime example of New Orleans mixed timing. Listen to drummer Charles Williams powering along in straight eighths while Justin Adams plays lazy swing triplets. Fats Domino’s hits just kept on coming. Poor Me was another R&B #1 in 1955, followed by I'm In Love Again in April 1956. Some of his biggest records, My Blue Heaven and Blueberry Hill, were rocked up standards. I'm Walkin’ was another #1 and was the record that brought the New Orleans parade band beat to a nationwide audience for the first time. Jim Payne: ‘Way back in 1959, Earl Palmer introduced the concept of playing 16th notes on the bass drum on the intro to Fats Domino's hit I’m Walkin'. You can also hear it on James Brown's I Got Money, with Clayton Fillyau on drums, who played with James through his early period, including the Live At The Apollo album. That was totally new ground. It was the birth of what they call the James Brown beat (or break beat).’ There was an unfortunate side-effect to the success of I’m Walkin’. Ricky Nelson covered it and
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had a big hit with it; Chudd was so impressed that he determined to lure Nelson on to his label. With Fats and Nelson at his disposal, he very quickly lost interest in the rest of his artist roster and divested himself of his other New Orleans acts, much to the detriment of the city’s future music scene.
from 1957, Let The Four Winds Blow: “It was just an audition tape, we were foolin’ around in the studio when we did it. Well Lew (Chudd) puts the goddamn record out. It was all out of time and tempo, the record just wasn’t right, but still did $1 million on it. I didn’t think it was hitting on shit.”
I Want To Walk You Home (#1 R&B) and Be My Guest (#2 R&B) were two of the biggest hits in his career and were both put out towards the end of 1959. His version of the Broadway tune, I'll Always Be In Love With You, was recorded in 1958 but not released until January 1961 when it was included on the I Miss You So album. Whole Lotta Lovin' again features the quintessential parade band beat. Fats‘s last two smash hits were Let The Four Winds Blow (#2 R&B) in June 1961 and that perfect blend of strings and R&B combo, Walking To New Orleans (#2 R&B July 1960). My Girl Josephine managed just #7 R&B in November 1960. After 59 hits for Imperial, he signed with ABC Records in 1961, managing just 6 minor chart entries for them in 7 years.
Chudd began distributing Minit Records in 1960 and his success with this venture caused him to rethink the decision to run down the New Orleans office and a number of artists were signed, such as the blues guitarist Snooks Eaglin. As Ford Eaglin, he made a couple of fine discs in the Ray Charles vein. Yours Truly features an exceptional guitar solo from Eaglin, and That Certain Door was his treatment of the Smiley Lewis song.
“I met a kid in Baton Rouge that was singing hillbilly – Roy Haynes. He had this song that me and Dave (Bartholomew) got interested in but it took me a long time before I felt comfortable enough to cut it.” The result was I'm Gonna Be a Wheel Someday, Bobby Mitchell’s approximation of the rockabilly style, with Justin Adams picking single notes in Chet Atkins fashion. It became a hit locally and when Fats Domino picked up on the song, it shot into the Billboard top 20. The Dukes that recorded in New Orleans for Imperial from Oklahoma were a completely different group from those who put backing vocals on Lloyd Price’s Chee Koo Baby in 1954. The eerie rumba Last Ride was unreleased at the time and was probably influenced by Sweet Breeze by Vernon Green & The Phantoms, which was out on Specialty at the time. Dave Bartholomew is often dismissive of his production work but never more so than when he described how he felt about Roy Brown’s #5 hit
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One of the first R&B records to feature the distinctive tumbao rhythm handclaps on beat two was Ray Charles’ 1953 disc Heartbreaker. With the influx of Latin-influenced records dominating the charts in 1956 and 1957, a new beat emerged in New Orleans, combining this tumbao rhythm with the backbeat of rock’n’roll. Drummers such as Earl Palmer and Hungry Williams played it in straight eighths, shedding the jazz 12/8 shuffle feel. It can be heard on Huey Smith’s 1958 disc High Blood Pressure. This is the surf or twist beat that dominated popular music from 1958 to 1963. George ‘Blazer Boy’ Stephenson’s New Orleans Twist uses this rhythm and checks the city's Popeye beat in the lyrics. Art Rupe’s Specialty Records The New Orleans second-line, two-beat, parade band rhythm pattern, with its three prominent beats and a skip has become so fully associated with rock’n’roll that it is easy to forget its origins, which are rooted in the Latin son clave. In one of the classic New Orleans recording sessions in April 1956 for Specialty Records, Frank Fields and Earl Palmer transformed this beat into one of the staple rhythmic riffs of rock’n’roll on Little Richard’s Rip It Up and Ready Teddy.
Earl King
Joe Ruffino
Earl Palmer
Eddie Bo
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Charles ‘Hungry’ Williams
Lee Dorsey
Chris Kenner
Johnny Vincent Art Rupe
Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry & The Beatles
Max Weinberg wrote: “When the pulse of rock’n’roll grabs you and won’t let go, it becomes the Big Beat. That’s how it was when Earl Palmer laid into Lucille sounding as if he were using baseball bats and kicking a thirty-foot bass drum.” Out went the jazz triplets; Lucille was played four beats to the bar with heavy snare on beats two and four and hi-hat on straight eight quavers. Earl Palmer recalled: “Little Richard moved from a shuffle to that straight eighthnote feeling…the only reason I started playing what they come to call a rock’n’roll beat came from trying to match Richard’s right hand...On Tutti Frutti you can hear me playing a shuffle. Listening to it now, it’s easy to hear I should have been playing that rock beat.” Palmer did the same for The Girl Can’t Help It, Keep a-Knockin’ and Good Golly Miss Molly, reproducing the sound of an insistent, pounding parade band. Long Tall Sally is now better known by the Beatles, who included it in their stage show between 1957 and 1966. Directly From My Heart came from the same session as Tutti Frutti but remained unreleased until 1960, when its gospel strains were considered more commercially acceptable. Little Richard gave up rock’n’roll for God in 1957 Session guitarist Roy Montrell made just one record for Specialty Records: the rumba-influenced romp, Mellow Saxophone, coupled with Ooh Wow. The only other release under his own name was Mudd, which came out three years later on Minit Records. Montrell taught guitar to a teenage Mac Rebennack but took an axe to Mac’s brand new shiny but very cheap guitar bought for him by his father, saying, “Mr. Rebennack, I ain’t teachin’ your son on that piece of shit.” Edgar Blanchard was a well-respected guitarist who recorded very little material in his own right. From a session of instrumentals recorded in August 1956, Specialty Records picked out Stepping High for release in the wake of the rock’n’roll instrumental craze following Bill Doggett’s Honky Tonk. Harmonically, the song is a throwback to the 1920s, but Blanchard’s guitar work brings it up to date, sounding very much like 1956’s in-vogue guitarist, Mickey Baker. He also made some fine instrumentals
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for Ric in 1958, including the unreleased Honeycomb and Knocked Out, under the name of his group the Gondoliers. Edgar 'Big Boy' Myles was New Orleans’s most sought after session trombone player but only occasionally recorded under his own name. He cut Just To Hold My Hand for Specialty in ‘56, before moving on to Argo in 1958 with Loud Mouth Annie, which features a fine guitar solo from Edgar Blanchard. His 1960 Ace release New Orleans is very much in the Ooh Poo Pah Doo party vein but Gary US Bonds' cover, a #5 R&B hit in October 1960, got all the plaudits. One of Myles’s legendary tricks at live gigs was to peel an orange while delivering a vocal. Lloyd Price was scarcely out of the charts for the 6 months following his 1st hit on Specialty, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, but further success eluded him and he upped sticks and moved to Washington, D.C. where he formed KRC Records with a couple of business associates. Before he left town, he cut the fine I’m Glad, Glad, which is spiced with a powerful rhythmic riff from rhythm section Earl Palmer and Frank Fields. His first record on the new label, Just Because, was an adaptation of Caro Nome, an aria from Verdi’s Rigoletto, and a licensing deal with ABC brought him a run of ten hits on the pop charts between 1957 and 1963. Art Neville began recording in the mid-fifties with his group the Hawketts and went on to cut a dozen or so tracks under his own name for Specialty between 1956 and 1959. Oooh-Wee Baby was the first of these to be released in January 1957. Joe Joseph and Alvin Tyler took the title and tune and wrote new words to it, converting it into Gee Baby, a top twenty hit in 1960. Both sides of Art’s third single Arabian Love Call b/w What's Going On are presented on this set. Neville would achieve wider fame in the 1960s and 70s as a founding member of the Meters and the Neville Brothers. Larry Williams was groomed as Little Richard’s rock’n’roll successor; he was a piano player with
the same raw vitality and shouting delivery and he ended up composing a handful of standards. His biggest hit, Short Fat Fannie, used the rhythm of Fats Domino’s I’m In Love Again and peppered the lyric with references to names of songs by Little Richard, Elvis and Fats. This was possibly the first of rock’n’roll’s many self referential songs. Williams certainly had a way with words, rhyming ‘Bony Moronie’ with ‘stick of macaroni’, ‘neighbourhood’ with ‘up to no good’. Mainly thanks to records emanating from New Orleans, the rumba rhythmic pattern was fast becoming part of the generic sound of rock’n’roll; witness Buddy Holly’s Rave On, Eddie Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock, Elvis’s King Creole, and Gene Vincent’s Catman. Larry Williams’s Oh Baby was cut in June 1957 and is another song recorded in this style. Although recorded in Los Angeles, Slow Down features a New Orleans big-band sound using top musicians from the Crescent City playing the now familiar rock backbeat. By 1957, the hits had started to dry up on Specialty. Williams’ third and final chart entry for the label, Dizzy, Miss Lizzy could only scrape in at #69 and the follow up, Bad Boy missed entirely. After five years of prodigious success with New Orleans music, the disillusioned Art Rupe began to wind down his operation in 1958 Johnny Vincent’s Ace and Vin Records Ace Records was set up in Jackson, Mississippi by Specialty’s A&R rep Johnny Vincent Imbragulio in 1955 after he fell out with his boss, Art Rupe. Ace became New Orleans's first important record label even though Jackson is a good 3 hours drive away, and Vincent's artists were constantly on the road between the two cities, recording at Diamond Studios in Jackson and at J.M. Studios in New Orleans. Earl King's career at Ace suffered a bit of a nose dive after recording his big national hit, Those Lonely, Lonely Nights. in 1955 (#7 R&B). Despite cutting some cracking singles, like Everybody's Carried Away and Is Everything All Right, he was unable to come up with another hit until the Imperial release Always
a First Time charted for him in March 1962. Cosimo Matassa: ‘I think Earl’s strength would be in coming up with little figures that fit ... a good little piece of lyric and a little figure to go with it.’ Dave Bartholomew was keen on Come On, the number that King used to close his live gigs with. When his contract was up with Ace, King signed with Imperial and cut the song with Bartholomew in October 1960. Earl King: ‘All the people wanted the guitar players to play that little interlude I was playing...Hendrix did almost the exact version except for the improvisation.’ The Rex issue titled Darling Honey Angel Child was recorded for Ace just before King left for Imperial. The first thing you notice about Huey 'Piano' Smith and the Clowns is that all the singing is in unison. Huey recalled: “No harmony singing for us, there were so many harmony group records around, but we sold records.” Little Liza Jane sold moderately well but Huey realised he was going to have to find himself a top-notch singer. “My voice wasn’t that good but I could get by with a few catchy lines...As it turns out, I did a verse, Izzacoo (Junior Gordon) did a verse and Dave Dixon did a verse.” Huey had played on a session with female impersonator Bobby Marchan in 1954 and a couple of years later, they recorded Huey’s song, Chicken Wah Wah together under Marchan’s name. Bobby ended up becoming the lead singer and de facto leader of the Clowns while Huey stayed back in New Orleans in the studio. Huey first hit the charts in 1957 with a song title based on Chuck Berry’s Roll Over Beethoven. Rockin’ Pneumonia And The Boogie Woogie Flu (#5 R&B, #52 Pop) was Ace’s first pop success. The follow up Free, Single And Disengaged pinched a riff from The Griffin Brothers' 1951 track, Shuffle Bug and is notable for its drumming. Johnny Vincent was keen on their ‘chugga-chugga drum sound, the old parade beat’ which Clowns drummer Charles Williams specialised in; here he also incorporates the Latin cascara rhythm. One of the defining features of late New Orleans R&B is a piano playing technique that involves a kind of
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bouncing between right and left hand. A familiar lick is the double oom-pah (oom-oom-pah-pah): two notes in the left hand followed by two in the right hand as in Fats Domino’s I’m In Love Again and Huey’s Don't You Just Know It (#4 R&B, #9 Pop). The song was constructed out of a catch phrase used by the Clowns’ driver Rudy Ray Moore (later a successful soul singer) and peppered with infectious partystyle call-and-response figures and memorable nonsense lines. High Blood Pressure was on the flip. A minor hit (#56 Pop) was Don't You Know Yokomo, and continuing with the illness motif of his earlier material, Huey only just missed out in 1959 with Would You Believe It (I Have A Cold). It is a testament to Bobby Marchen’s vocal range that he sang as a female impersonator before joining the Clowns. Johnny Vincent gave him the chance to record five singles under his own name but the 1958 disc Rockin' Behind The Iron Curtain b/w You Can't Stop Her is essentially another Clowns disc with Marchan’s name on the label. Marchan left the Clowns in 1959 and signed with Bobby Robinson's Fury Records, with whom he had a #1 R&B hit with his version of the Big Jay McNeely number There Is Something On Your Mind. Huey Smith with Sea Cruise and Bobby Marchan with its flip Roberta, were both victims of a stitchup by Johnny Vincent, who decided to erase their vocals from the original versions of the songs, replacing them with new vocals by the Algiers-born singer, Frankie Ford. Vincent’s instincts proved to be right, though, and the sea cruise soundscape was made complete with the addition of bells and foghorns; the record climbed as high as #14 Pop in February 1959. The follow-up Alimony was good too, just scraping into the Hot 100 at # 97 in August. Long playing records were something of a novelty still in the late 1950s and companies only generally released compilation LPs by big selling artists. Huey’s album Havin' A Good Time was released in 1959 featuring all the tracks that had previously been
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issued on singles by the Clowns. In the 1960s, it became more normal for record companies to release albums containing tracks that had not previously been issued on 45. Smith’s second LP For Dancing, featured such album-only cuts as Suzie Q, with Charles 'Hungry' Williams’s stirring, parade band snare drum breaks, and Somewhere, which features Smith’s characteristic bouncing hands piano style. Antoon Aukes: ‘The entire repertoire of Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and the Clowns is a case study in New Orleans mixed timing. . . the loose group singing, the horn riffs, the piano licks and Hungry Williams’ hi-hat patterns: they each seem to have their own rhythmical articulation – which created that joyous party feel in every song.’ The vocalist on Somewhere is none other than Benny Spellman. Smith’s later work for Ace was consistently good, including the Vincent-produced dance hit, Popeye (#51 Pop) on which Smith himself is absent, and the funky Talk To Me Baby from 1962, with new lead singer Curley Moore. Huey Smith was in the studio in 1956 to cut a new song he had just written, Blow Wind Blow. Johnny Vincent let Junior Gordon (‘Izzycoo’ Cougarten) handle the lead vocals and released it under the latter’s name. Perennial drummer Charles Williams is there again, teasing out second-line rhythms underneath the rumba beat. Call The Doctor was Junior’s only other 45, released six years later on Jay Pee in the style of Chris Kenner. Roland Cook was the original bassist with Huey Smith playing on all his recordings between 1953 and 1957. Smith played piano on Cook’s only release I've Got A Girl; Tell Me Baby was cut in 1956 but remained unissued until its inclusion on a CD compilation. Cook was a well-respected session player and accompanied Earl King on his early recordings. He signed with Lou Krefetz’s Poplar Records in 1958, but the company never released anything and he went back to session work. Roland Stone (Roland LeBlanc) cut two versions of James Wayne's 1951 Louisiana classic, Junco Partner; the first in 1959 as Preacher's Daughter; the second, Down The Road, came out on his Just a Moment album in 1961.
Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry
Dave Bartholemew
Champion Jack Dupree
Eddie Bo
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Bobby Marchan
Upsetters
Earl king
Art Neville
Bobby Charles
Benny Spellman
Amos Milburn released no less than fifty-three singles during a spell of almost fifteen years at Aladdin Records. He spent the latter part of these years in New Orleans, where he cut six tracks with the studio band, one of which was a rousing rock’n’roll version of his 1948 hit Chicken Shack Boogie. Aladdin finally let his contract run out in 1958 and he was picked up by Ace, who paired him up with Charles Brown. Educated Fool was cut in April 1959 and sounds like a typical Clowns record with its infectious hand claps and horn riffs provided by Lee Allen and Red Tyler. On the B-side was Brown’s song I Want To Go Home whose melody, arrangement and gospel changes Sam Cooke later used as a template for the classic Bring It On Home To Me. Alvin ‘Red’ Tyler’s baritone and Lee Allen’s tenor sax formed the backbone of Dave Bartholomew’s Imperial session band. Tyler cut two singles under his own name for Ace, Snake Eyes and Happy Sax, and one album Rockin' and Rollin' in 1960, which featured his version of the Don Azpiazu classic, The Peanut Vendor. Tyler formed Parlo Records with George Davis and Warren Parker, producing the million-selling Aaron Neville hit Tell It Like It Is. The distributors never paid out on the hit; the company folded and Red became a full-time liquor salesman. Mac Rebennack, latterly known as Dr. John, had a couple of singles on Ace. The first, the groovy piano instrumental Mercy, was recorded in 1959 under the name Gene & Al's Spacemen. The second, Sahara b/w Good Times (1961) was another instrumental coupling, this time under his own name, arranged in the style of Allen Toussaint. Danny White and the Cavaliers were one of the most popular live bands in town in the late fifties, so popular and well-paid that he didn’t initially feel the need for a recording career. He did cut Let’s Play for Ace in 1956, but Vincent chose not to release it. Allen Toussaint recalls: “Danny inspired me to write some songs but unfortunately we weren’t recording him at the time, so I gave the tunes to K-Doe. I’m
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speaking about Mother-In-Law and Certain Girl – that was Danny’s style. There was something very influential about Danny’s style that was absorbed by a lot of artists that had records here.” It wasn’t until 1961 that White had a record out – Somebody Please Help Me on Dot. Connie LaRocca snapped him up the following year for her Frisco Records, and released the soulful Wardell Quezergue arrangement, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye. Shortly after the release of Joe & Ann’s Gee Baby, Joe was arrested and Ann disappeared too. A #108 pop placing gave Vincent the headache of finding a new Joe & Ann to cut follow ups. Cliff and Ed Thomas had just recorded Shame and they were chosen along with one of their sisters for the next releases Will You and Curiosity. The duo briefly carried on its phantom career at Hermitage Records with the soulful Popeye beat record Runnin' & Foolin'. Vincent's subsidiary label, Vin Records, put out thirty or so records between 1958 and 1961 by artists such as Elton Anderson, Frankie Lee Sims, Calvin Shields and Ray Washington, whose jaunty rocker I Know was produced by Rebennack in 1960. He is better known as Guitar Ray and it was under this pseudonym that he cut Keep On Trying for the local Invicta label. Some of the more obscure artists released on Vin in 1958 were Albert Scott, who released just one single, Can't Let You Go, I Love You So and the rockabilly singer Harry Lee. Lee cut Everytime I See You in 1958 and Hair Of Gold in 1959 for the label. Jimmy Mullins was drummer with Frankie Lee Sims's band; as Mercy Baby, he made Rock And Roll Baby in 1957, before releasing Pleadin’ in 1958 for Vin in a downhome style with the assistance of some fine guitar work from Sims. Joe Ruffino's Ric and Ron Records Ruffino set up his twin labels in 1958 at premises in Baronne Street, New Orleans, bringing in top local musicians Mac Rebennack, Edgar Blanchard, Eddie Bo and Harold Battiste as staff arrangers. Eddie Bo
(Edwin Bocage) began his career on Ace in 1955 followed by a five-disc spell at New York-based Apollo Records. Earl Palmer’s characteristic parade band shuffle powers I'm Wise along while the rest of the band get into a rumba groove. Little Richard had the hit version, which he retitled Slippin’ and Slidin’ but Al Collins cut the original for Ace as I Got The Blues For You. Hey, Bo was a sprightly instrumental with a cascara beat, recorded a couple of years before The Champs brought that beat to the world’s attention in Tequila. Chess picked up Bo’s contract in 1957, releasing Indeed I Do on Checker and Oh Oh on Chess. Bo was in his purple period at Ric Records, where he cut nine singles between 1959 and 1962. His third single for the label, Tell It Like It Is, borrows from Smiley Lewis’s Jailbird and has John Boudreaux's stirring New Orleans parade beat running right through it. At some point during 1961, the kids in New Orleans developed a dance based on mannerisms adopted from Popeye the sailor man. The Popeye beat was a mixture of Earl Palmer’s 4 to the floor drumming (as heard on Fats Domino’s 1949 Fat Man) and Charles ‘Hungry’ Williams’s work with Huey Smith. The resulting rhythm is what Rebennack called New Orleans fonk cha-cha. One of the very best records of this type to come out of the city was Now Let’s Popeye but the beat can also be heard on Bo’s Baby I'm Wise, a 1962 update on I'm Wise. The AFO Combo provided the backing for most of Eddie’s Ric material, such as Roamin-itis and I Got To Know. Bo worked for over forty different record labels in his lengthy career but is probably best known for funky tracks like Hook It And Sling It and Check Your Bucket. Local white singer Lenny Capello made a few records for Ric with the Dots, one of which, Tootles, was recorded in the style of Larry Williams. Joe Jones cut the Reggie Hall song You Talk Too Much for Roulette, but the label did nothing with it, so he offered it to Ric. It became Ruffino’s only national hit, but proved problematic when Roulette boss and noted mafioso Morris Levy decided he wanted a piece of the action. Needless to say, Roulette got the
sales at Ric’s expense. The rare alternate 45 version is presented here. One of the great New Orleans party records that never made it at the time was Feeling Alright on Saturday Night by the Velvetiers who made just the one disc for the label in 1958. It is rumoured to have been by Huey Smith & the Clowns moonlighting under another name, but who knows? And listen out for Huey (or whoever) quoting Champion Jack’s 1941 Junker Blues. Al Johnson's Carnival Time has become one of the most requested songs at the annual Mardi Gras festival. Recorded in 1960, it was released while Johnson was drafted into the US army. When he came out, he realised he had unwittingly signed away the ownership to all his music and had to support himself by working as a cab driver, while struggling to reassert his rights. After Ruffino's death, he managed to get a federal court to rule in his favour. Eddy Lang (Edward Langlois) was only fifteen in 1951 when he began playing guitar with Jessie Hill’s House Rockers. His first release My Baby Left Me came out under the name Little Eddie on Bullet Records; he then moved to RPM Records in 1956, scoring a local hit with Come On Home. Ace Records picked him up after this but Johnny Vincent hasn’t happy with the tracks Mac Rebennack produced, so he leased them to Ron Records, with Easy Rockin’ and She’s Mine All Mine coming out in 1959. The latter had the typical New Orleans heavy snare and bass drum sound which Gary U.S. Bonds picked up on and used on New Orleans. Paul Marvin (Marvin Geatreaux) recorded the Mac Rebennack song Hurry Up for Ron in March 1959: 'Marvin sells this wild effort in driving Jerry Lee Lewis style backed solidly by the band. Side has a sound and a chance for some coin.' (Billboard) Robert Parker is best known for his mid-sixties soul classic, Barefootin’. He began his career as tenor saxophonist with Professor Longhair and was
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present on the latter’s early sessions for Mercury, Star Talent and Atlantic, notably on the 1949 recording of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. He cut a couple of instrumental singles for Ron, the first of which was the two-parter All Nite Long in 1959, followed by Across the Tracks a year later. Professor Longhair’s career had been in the doldrums ever since Atlantic had dropped him from their roster in 1953. Apart from occasional gigs, he’d practically given up on the music business, trying his hand at being a card shark for a while, even ending up sweeping the floors in a record shop. After a minor stroke, Byrd drifted away from music, until Los Angeles label Ebb Records released three singles during 1957: No Buts – No Maybes, Look What You're Doin' To Me and Baby Let Me Hold Your Hand, his only single released in the UK. Ebb was owned by Leonora Rupe, who formed the company with the money she received as a divorce settlement from her ex-husband Art. Byrd came back in 1959 with a session for Ron Records that resulted in two fine discs, Cuttin' Out and the joyous Go to the Mardi Gras, a rerecording of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The original drummer on that session, John Boudreaux, returns here in fine form with a rousing bout of parade band drumming in what is generally considered to be the finest recorded version of the song. Boudreaux’s sticks can also be heard on classic hits such as Mother-In-Law, Land of a Thousand Dances, Ya-Ya and Ooh Poo Poo Pa Doo. Apart from Big Chief, the record many commentators see as the swan song for New Orleans R&B, the sixties were a pretty barren time for the Professor, but better things were to come starting with a successful return to live performances at the Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1971. Tommy Ridgley first started recording in 1949 with Shrewsbury Blues for Imperial Records. He was never a big-selling artist but he gained moderate success with further releases on Decca (Tra-la-la) and Atlantic (Jam Up). He cut six discs for Herald between 1957 and 1959; When I Meet That Girl (a rocking take-off on The Irish Washerwoman) was the only one to gain
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any success, and that only in the local area. When he signed to Ric Records, Joe Ruffino attempted to cash in on the Stroll dance craze by billing Ridgley as the 'New Orleans King of Stroll'. The third of his eight singles for the label was a recording of his own song Double Eyed Whammy. Johnny Adams sang gospel with the Soul Revivers and Bessie Griffin's Consolators and it wasn't until the age of 27 that he was persuaded to try his hand at secular music by his neighbour, Dorothy LaBostrie, composer of Tutti Frutti. ‘There was this guy from down the hall...and he was really something. It was Johnny Adams. He was working as a roofer at the time and singing in spiritual groups at night. I asked him if he wanted to sing rock’n’roll, but he said he couldn’t because all his friends would get mad at him.’ Most of Adams’s recordings are in the soul idiom, but the gospel-influenced Who's Gonna Love You is pure New Orleans R&B. Come On was cut at the same session as his first single, I Won’t Cry. Ric and Ron Records were wound up in 1962 but history has been kind to the music he produced thanks to researcher Jeff Hannusch and Rounder Records, who purchased the labels and have produced consistently high quality reissues over the years. Joe Banashak's Minit, Instant and Alon Records Banashak owned a record distribution company operating out of Houston in 1957 and at one time had both Johnny Vincent and Joe Ruffino working for him. He founded Minit Records in 1959 together with prominent local DJ Larry McKinley, signing Jessie Hill, Benny Spellman, Irma Thomas and Aaron Neville from their very first audition. Harold Battiste had been earmarked as production manager for the label but his work with Specialty prevented him from taking up the post, so Banashak turned to pianist Allen Toussaint, who had accompanied singer Allen Orange at the first audition. Toussaint had already cut an album for RCA and had previously
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Fats Domino
Guitar Slim
Smiley Lewis
Joe banashak
The ShaWeez
Frank Fields & Dave Bartholenew Fats Domino & Dave Bartholenew
arranged sessions for Ember, including saxophonist Lee Allen’s 1958 instrumental hit Walkin’ With Mr. Lee. Now at Minit, he was able to utilise his songwriting talents along with his production role. Cosimo Matassa: ‘Two guys, Murray Sporn and Danny Kesler came to New Orleans... looking for talent. They ran an ad and they were lined up round the studio for 3 days...so they said, “man, we’re wasting our time with all these people, how about a session with this guy?” (Allen Toussaint was the pianist on the session).’ The resulting album, The Wild Sounds Of New Orleans, came out in June 1958 under the name Al Tousan. Whirlaway and Java were pulled from the album as singles. The following year, Toussaint signed a four single deal with Seville Records, releasing a series of lively instrumentals, such as Chico and Moo Moo. In August 1959, Toussaint’s first production for Minit was a session with Ernie K-Doe (Ernest Kador). Toussaint’s gospel piano changes coloured both There’s A Will There’s A Way and its beautiful flip, Make You Love Me. K-Doe scored four straight hits on the pop charts in 1961. Benny Spellman contributed the deep bass voice on the biggest of them, Mother-inLaw, which was the first record produced in the city to top the Billboard national pop charts. Te-Ta-Te-TaTa was a lesser hit but both sides of the next single I Cried My Last Tear b/w A Certain Girl made it into the Hot 100. The eighth of Doe's eleven Minit singles, I Got to Find Somebody, is one of Toussaint's funkier productions from that era and the singer sounds just as comfortable in the Popeye groove as he does on its flip, the more soulful Beating Like A Tom Tom. Aaron Neville's recording career started with a bang - his first release on Minit, the Toussaint song Over You was recorded towards the end of 1959 and was a #21 R&B hit early the following year. He had to wait until 1966 for his next hit, Tell It Like It Is. He cut seven further records for Minit, none of which managed to emulate the success of Over You.
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Jessie Hill was initially a drummer, gigging with Professor Longhair in his lean years and later with Huey Smith & His Clowns. Hill’s first single for Minit was the two-parter Ooh Poo Pah Doo; John Broven described it as ‘the rhythms of the New Orleans Spiritual churches colliding head-on with the calland-response patterns of the hottest R&B record of 1959, Ray Charles's What’d I Say.’ It turned out to be the first of a series of party records which set the charts alight in 1960, with Gary US Bonds New Orleans and Chubby Checker's The Twist following on in the same vein. Hill's ‘creating a disturbance in your mind’ catchphrase was lifted from Charles Brown’s Educated Fool; the exuberance of its singer and the party feel of the production helped to make this Minit’s first commercial success in April 1960 (#3 R&B, #28 Pop). Jessie's follow-up Whip It On Me was almost as good but only managed #91 Pop. After that came another even funkier party record Scoop Scoobie Doobie and a song he wrote with his old boss, Professor Longhair, Oogsey Moo. The lyrically humorous The Pot's On Strike was cut at Hill's last session for Minit in February 1962. He continued to record throughout the sixties for various labels such as Downey, Wand and Chess, but with limited commercial success. Benny Spellman started out singing with the Clowns before inking a solo contract with Minit in 1960. The minor key Ammerette, makes a pretty successful attempt at aping the pop R&B of Little Willie John's Fever. He is probably best known in the soul fraternity for the uptempo dancer Fortune Teller, which scraped into the national charts at #80 in February 1962. The B-side, Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette) is almost as well known and features backing vocals from Irma Thomas and Willie Harper. It was as secondary vocalist singing the baritone title phrase on K-Doe's smash hit Mother-In-Law that Spellman really made his name. Benny was none too impressed at getting no credit or royalties on what is generally considered to be the stand-out hook of the song, so he jumped ship and cut Roll On for Ace Records. Spellman sang the baritone responses to another lead singer, Roland Stone just like he’d
done on Mother-In-Law; this time he got the label credit, but the record bombed so he still didn’t get any royalties. Chris Kenner’s first single, Grandma's House was on Baton in 1956 and his 1957 Imperial single Sick And Tired is another example of mixed timing, or flattened-out double shuffle. Rocket to the Moon was his only release for Ron and Don't Make No Noise was cut for Pontchartrain in 1959. I Like It Like That was the real game changer both for Kenner and the Instant label: the record reached #2 consecutively Pop & R&B. Something You Got was a huge hit locally but he had to wait until mid 1963 for his next success, Land Of 1000 Dances (#77 Pop). The sleazy, laid-back and funky backing was recorded in April 1962 by the AFO Combo. This was the team Toussaint used as he forged a new production approach that couldn't have been more different from Dave Bartholomew's now dated ensemble, riffing sound. The Showmen came down to New Orleans from Norfolk, Virginia to record for Minit in May 1961. Their first single It Will Stand was played to death by local DJs on its release, resulting in a #61 pop hit. The Wrong Girl and Com’n Home were fine follow-ups, but neither managed to emulate the success of It Will Stand. The group’s next issue True Fine Mama evokes the sound of an earlier era of New Orleans music with its trumpet-led Dixieland arrangement. The Showmen's singer, General Norman Johnson had considerable success in the 1970s as lead singer of Chairmen Of The Board, after teaming up with Motown's crack production team of Holland/Dozier/ Holland, who guided them through a run of eight hit singles on the Invictus label.
Wilbert Smith was the original sax player with Little Richard's touring band the Upsetters. With Richard giving up music for the church, the Upsetters were left to carve out a career for themselves. They made a couple of soulful singles for Minit as Lee Diamond, with Smith handling the vocals on the first disc It Won't Be Me. The Larry Williams-styled Hattie Malatti came out on Vee-Jay and begins in an unusual manner with an unaccompanied guitar lick that sounds like something from the 60s. Smith continued recording in the sixties and is probably best remembered as the co-composer of Tell It Like It Is. Unfortunately, he was arrested and jailed before he could complete the lyrics. Calvin LeBlanc and Willie Harper were members of the Del-Royals who cut three singles for Minit in 1960. After the group split, LeBlanc recorded two 45s for the same company as Calvin Lee, the second of which was his version of Fats Domino's Valley Of Tears. He resurfaced later in the 60s with one disc apiece for Sansu and Josie. Willie Harper's release But I Couldn't was the first on Banashak’s Alon Records in 1961. One of Allen Toussaint's interesting arrangement techniques was to orchestrate riffs for horn sections using parallel voicings. This became one of the defining features of British rock music when the technique was transposed to guitar on such songs as the Kinks' You Really Got Me. The demise of Minit came about at the start of 1963. Allen Toussaint got his draft papers for the US army, so the hits dried up. In addition, Banashak had cashflow problems, so when Lew Chudd offered to buy him out, he felt that the time was right. AFO (All For One) Records
Raymond Lewis played bass with the Clowns and recorded an answer record to Prince La La's She Put The Hurt On Me in September 1961 with I'm Gonna Put Some Hurt On You. The latter was given a new lease of life by the Meters in 1968 who recorded a super funky version for Sansu Records with Art Neville on vocals.
The very first record label to be owned by AfroAmerican musicians, AFO, was established as a collective in June 1961 by saxophonist Harold Battiste with the AFO Combo, Chuck Badie, John Boudreaux, Melvin Lastie, Roy Montrell and Alvin 'Red' Tyler. Battiste was the brains behind the whole
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project and he recalls: 'the purpose of AFO Records all along was, first of all, to demonstrate that we had a music here that people needed to pay more attention to... it was about recognizing that we had a grass-roots talent base here that needed to be recognized by the business community.' Within a few months of its formation, it found itself with two hits on its hands: Prince La-La's She Put The Hurt On Me and Barbara George's I Know. In his autobiography Hoodoo Moon, Mac Rebennack, ever an astute observer of New Orleans music, makes the case for the pivotal place of AFO productions not only for New Orleans but for the whole of American music. ‘AFO was the breeding ground for the new sound... The arrangements on these and other tunes changed the way music was being played in the United States...The kind of phrasing the AFO horn section laid down influenced R&B and rock and roll horn charts...On the bass, Richard Payne was coming up with a funk groove that matched some of the new drum rhythms. Chuck Badie picked up on it ... the sound wafted over to Sam Jones, who was Cannonball Adderley’s bass player, and seeped into mainstream jazz.’ Barbara George's I Know was based on the spiritual Just a Closer Walk with Thee and was AFO’s biggest hit nationally. It featured the Popeye beat, reaching #3 Pop and #28 R&B. David Lastie's staccato trumpet solo on the record impressed Herb Alpert so much that he based his entire subsequent sound around it. Sadly, AFO came a cropper after cutting a deal with Juggy Murray to have this and other tracks distributed on his Sue label, which ended in their losing George, their star recording artist. Harold Battiste had produced Lee Dorsey’s first disc LottieMo for Valiant Records. Bobby Robinson, Murray's rival in New York, loved this record so much he signed Lee Dorsey for his label Fury, but Battiste and the AFO Combo continued working with Dorsey, to Murray’s considerable annoyance. The partnership became acrimonious and Juggy Murray left with Barbara George, claiming in Billboard in April 1962 to have paid AFO $25,000 for her contract, which they
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denied. The truth will never be known definitively, but AFO had no more hits, and neither did Barbara George despite Murray's best efforts. AFO put out a total of thirteen singles and two albums before being wound up mid-1963. Willie Tee was spotted as a promising pianist while still at school and his music teacher, Harold Battiste, allowed him to sit in on piano at selected live gigs. When AFO Records was established, Battiste gave Tee the chance to record a couple of singles in 1962, the first of which was the self-composed Always Accused b/w the mournful minor key All For One. Jimmy Jules (Charley C. Julien) cut a number of tracks for AFO during 1961 with Harold Battiste as producer. Two of these were leased to Atlantic, resulting in an October 1961 release for the single Talk About You. Jules was also known as Pistol due to his carrying around a pistol in his coat pocket. An enormous amount of music was recorded and not released at AFO but remained in the can until British Ace Records reactivated the catalogue with a series of fine CDs in its Gumbo Stew series. One such gem was The Turquinettes’ Tell Me The Truth. Chess, Checker & Argo In 1956, Bill Haley covered Bobby Charles’ Later, Alligator in a much lighter arrangement, changing the beat from New Orleans shuffle to two-step rock and the result was a #6 spot on the pop charts. Charles evidently took note of the Haley version and crafted Take It Easy, Greasy in a similar style. Why Can't You is more in the Fats Domino mould and is now considered to be one of the forerunners of swamp pop. Charles recorded extensively for Chess Records but became better known as a songwriter for artists such as Fats Domino (Walking To New Orleans, Before I Grow Too Old) and Clarence ‘Frogman’ Henry (But I Do). Henry originally wrote his big Argo hit Ain't Got No Home (#3 R&B) with Shirley and Lee in mind. When he cut the demo, there was no female vocalist around so he supplied
Amos Milburn
Barbara George
Bobby Marchan
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Earl Palmer
Little Richard
Little Richard
Lloyd Price
Lee Allen
TV Slim
Mac Rebennack
Huey Smith
Fats Domino
Allen Toussaint
the falsetto voice himself. He recalls how the record took off: “A disc jockey called Poppa Stoppa here in New Orleans was pushin' Troubles Troubles for the A-side and he flipped it over to Ain't Got No Home and the people was crazy over it.” After its success, Henry must have thought he had it all cut out for him, but it was 5 more years before he was back in the charts with But I Do (#9 R&B #4 Pop). The intro was sketched out by tenor player Nat Perilliat and the AFO Combo provided the backing to Allen Toussaint's arrangement. Lonely Street (#19 R&B #57 Pop) uses the familiar Louisiana tune that Chuck Berry famously lifted from Clarence Garlow's Route 90 for Sweet Little Sixteen. New Orleans drummer Vernel Fournier was in the Ahmad Jamal Trio, who recorded the At the Pershing album for Checker in 1958, from which the single Poinciana was taken. This is one of the first recorded examples of New Orleans rhythms being used on a modern jazz record. Fournier plays closed hi hats on beats 1 and 3 making it sound like the Disco beat, way before Disco was born. Oscar Wills had been a semi-pro blues guitarist for over twenty years before he recorded his most celebrated composition, Flat Foot Sam in 1957 at the age of 41. Wills's main occupation was in running a television repair shop, which is where he got his nickname, T.V. Slim. The record came out initially on the Shreveport-based label, Clif Records, but after heavy plugging on local radio, it was leased for national distribution to Chess Records. Leonard Chess had a hunch that it would sound much better if it was re-recorded in New Orleans, so a session was set up with a band that included Robert Parker on sax and Charles 'Hungry' Williams on drums. This second version was released on Argo but under his own name, Oscar Wills. For You My Love was a hit for Larry Darnell in 1949 but its writer, Paul Gayten, decided to cut it himself while he was A&R executive at Chess. Charles ‘Hungry’ Williams propels the track along
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with his characteristic Latin rock’n’roll drumming, and Edgar Blanchard’s muted guitar notes double the cymbal rhythm throughout before he tears into a fine distorted solo. After Bill Doggett’s surprising success with Honky Tonk in August 1956, the search was on for the next big rocking blues instrumental. Gayten made several attempts, most notably with Drivin’ Home and Nervous Boogie, but to no avail. He never had a hit under his own name during his five year stint with Chess, despite recording many fine, rocking tracks like You Better Believe It.
Al Reed: ‘The change came when Funky Charles started playing the drums, that was when all the shit changed...He was the funkiest thing out...I remember when Charles broke his leg and he was playing with his right leg in a cast.’ Earl King: ‘(His) playing emanated out of the calypso type stuff...he used to play with that Cuban guy, Rico...every Latin rhythm he could play.’ Charles ‘Hungry’ Williams cut a few tracks under his own name. So Glad You're Mine was recorded for Checker at the end of 1955 and Darling came out in 1957 on the same label. Aside from playing with Huey Smith’s Clowns, Williams was in big demand as a session drummer, more so after Earl Palmer moved out to the West Coast in 1957. Along with fellow New Orleans drummers Earl Palmer, John Boudreaux and James Black, Williams is credited with laying the foundations for the development of funk music. He met James Brown’s drummer, Clayton Fillyau one night in Florida in 1960 and explained to him some of the intricacies of New Orleans percussion techniques. He is reported as saying to Fillyau: “I don’t care where you put it (the double downbeats) on those drums, remember where ‘1’ is, and you’ll never lose the time.” (Earl Palmer was actually the first musician to use the expression ‘funky’ in referring to a syncopated and danceable beat). Real Gone Jam was recorded under the name of Tommy Ridgley but is a showcase for Hungry Williams. Ridgeley: ‘Hungry was on drums. This particular beat was his style. Nobody could duplicate what he was doing.’
Other Labels With the amount of hits rolling out of New Orleans in 1956, everybody wanted a piece of the action. Cosimo Matassa: ‘Record companies were running from all over the world to record something ... (but) I don’t think nobody from New Orleans made any money.' After leaving the Los Angeles-based label Flair Records in 1954, Clarence Garlow only made half a dozen further records, the last of which, Sound The Bell was cut for Louisiana’s Goldband Records sometime in 1957 and features Katie Webster on piano. His crisp guitar tone cuts through the track like ice, leaving the rhythm section sounding as if it was recorded out in the yard. In March 1956, Elvis Presley’s first release on RCA, Heartbreak Hotel, went to #1 in the national charts. RCA looked to capitalise on the new market for rhythm and blues and they launched a new imprint in April, Vik Records, which was to specialise in R&B. Amongst the many artists they signed were Mickey (Baker) & Sylvia, who hit with Love Is Strange in January 1957, and Champion Jack Dupree, whose first track for them was Dirty Woman. Dupree was one of the first bluesmen to leave his native country for a more (racially) accepting climate when he moved to Europe in 1959; Ici Mo-Mo was recorded in London in 1960. The Upsetters backed up Lester Robinson in 1958 on My Girl Across Town, kicking off Sam Montalbano’s Baton Rouge–based Montel Records. The record sold well enough for him to cut local teenager John Fred (Gourrier’s) self-composed Shirley as the label’s second release. The disc did surprisingly well and shot up to #82 on Billboard’s national charts, helped no doubt by the fact that the backing musicians were none other than the J&M studio band, who had just completed work on Fats Domino’s Whole Lotta Loving. Fred is of course better known for his work in the 60s with the Playboys but, to his credit, he never strayed far from his Louisiana roots. Judy In Disguise slowed down (without the 60s sound effects) is pure New Orleans Popeye.
The Spiders were the most successful New Orleans harmony group and featured brothers Chuck and Leonard Carbo. When they split in 1956, Leonard cut one solo disc for Atlantic before recording Pig Tails And Ribbons for Vee-Jay, backed with the J&M studio band. I Don't Want To Lose Her, a re-write of the Spiders’ hit I Didn’t Want To Do It, was cut at the same session but was unreleased at the time. Four years were to pass before Leonard was signed to Instant by Allen Toussaint, where he cut two more singles as Chick Carbo, Two Tables Away and In the Night. Brother Chuck signed for Matassa’s Rex Records in 1959 and the Rebennack song Be My Girl was the first release under the name, Chuck Carbo and His Band. Matassa: ‘Rex was really just a local thing. I named it after the city’s most popular carnival crew.’ In January 1958, Big Al Downing cut what is considered to be one of the shortest ever rock'n'roll records: Down On the Farm was released by White Rock Records and comes in at just 91 seconds. His second label Carlton Records sent him down to Cosimo's Studio in 1959, and with a band that included Red Tyler, Mac Rebennack and Hungry Williams, he recorded the Fats Domino-styled When My Blue Moon Turns To Gold Again. Downing was one of surprisingly few Afro-Americans who enjoyed success with rockabilly and country music. Boogie Bayou Shuffle was recorded by the Bill Parker Band for Eddie Shuler's Goldband Records, which was based in Lake Charles and concentrated on recording local Cajun, rockabilly and swamp pop artists. Pianist Tal Miller cut Mean Old Kokamoo for the label in 1957 but the follow-up Only Sixteen was leased to Hollywood Records. Another of Shuler's labels was Trey Records, which put out a couple of discs by guitarist Elton Anderson, including the Louisiana swamp rock'n'roll record, But I Love You. Anderson's first 45, Roll On Train, had been the first record to be released on Vin in 1958. In the 60s, the guitarist made some fine records for Lanor Records with Mac Rebennack and Wardell Quezergue.
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Lee Allen was born in Kansas and came to New Orleans to study at Xavier University. He began playing with Paul Gayten before becoming a member of the J&M studio band. Eddie Mesner approached him to cut a solo disc for Aladdin, and though Rockin' at Cosmo's was not a success, it heralded the start of a new career specialising in pop instrumentals. Herald Records was run from New York by Al Silver and Sidney Braverman. Lee Allen signed for their sister label Ember in 1957 and had a couple of hits for them in 1958 with Tic Toc and Walkin’ With Mr. Lee. Allen: ‘We were on a big show with Fats Domino... I’d come up with this little riff of mine and these guys from New York City said why didn’t I record that. [Later] the guy from New York called up and said, “You got a hit (#54 Pop).” ’ Tic Toc didn’t do as well, #92 Pop, and strangely, neither disc made it on the R&B charts. The follow up Cat Walk with its Latin cascara rhythm didn’t hit at all. The long playing 33rpm album was slow to catch the public’s imagination. Modern Records were one of the first indies off the mark with their modestly titled A Collection of Popular Recordings series in 1950, but it wasn’t until 1956 that they began to tap the teenage market with a series of attractively priced albums on the Crown imprint at $1.49 each. Jimmy Beasley was one artist who benefitted from this new policy with an LP recorded in New Orleans with the Bartholomew band entitled Fabulous. Initially released in mid 1957, the album was repackaged in 1961 as Jimmy Beasley Twist to cash in on the popular dance craze and a number of tracks from his 1957 sessions were added including Rhumba Rock. Apart from a single session in 1965, Beasley made no further recordings. Shirley Goodman was just thirteen years old when she started her singing career. In 1952, she and her friends somehow managed to persuade Cosimo Mattassa to record them with the J&M studio band behind them. Eddie Mesner heard the tape, signed her up with school friend Leonard Lee, and only a few weeks later, Aladdin Records had a top ten hit on their hands with I’m Gone. Things went quiet for Shirley & Lee, giving them time to get back to
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school. Then in the summer of 1956, Feels So Good hit the R&B charts and then riding along the wave of the rock’n’roll craze, Lee’s song Let The Good Times Roll made #1 R&B in July 1956. Modern Records sent one of their top-selling artists, Etta James down for a session with Dave Bartholomew’s band, and they came up with the doo-wop-sounding I’m A Fool c/w Tough Lover, which was more in the Little Richard mould. It didn’t click with the record-buying public though. Little Richard had that market completely sewn up with no less than eight titles in the charts in 1956. Popular local vocal group the Sparks won a battleof-the-bands contest and travelled to New York, where they cut a couple of tracks for Decca Records. The arrangement of Merry Merry Lou betrays their New Orleans roots with its parade band beat and Fats Domino-style vamping. An interesting postscript to the story is that Gene Pitney heard the song and converted it into Hello, Mary Lou. The writer, Fr. Cayet Mangiaracina, is still collecting royalties for it which he donates to the religious mission of the Dominicans. “Last year it was $35,000,” Mangiaracina said in 2001. “About three or four years ago, I got a check for $90,000.” Millard Leon Willie West's first records were in the swamp pop style for Dorothy Lee's small Rustone label based in Houma, LA. A Man Like Me, his fourth single, was based on a B.B. King song of (almost) the same name but sung in a Little Richard style. West later sang with the Meters and worked for Frisco and more notably Deesu, where he struck up a partnership with Allen Toussaint and Marshall Sehorn. Fairchild was probably his best work, a fat slice of New Orleans funk that he made in 1970 for Josie Records backed by the Meters. Swamp pop was a mixture of Louisiana R&B and rock’n’roll, early practitioners being Huey 'Cookie' Thierry and the Cupcakes. Thierry's first disc was with Allen Toussaint for RCA in 1958 but the Cupcakes had a local hit on their first recording
Edgar Blanchard & The Gondoliers
Lew Chudd & Ricky Nelson
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Bobby Mitchel & The Toppers
Champion Jack Dupree
Lloyd Price
Little Richard
Ernest Kador
Tommy Ridgely
Smiley Lewis
together, Mathilda in 1959 for George Khoury’s Judd Records. Shelton Dunaway took the lead and the label credits on Mary Lou Doing The Popeye. The disc was cut at the height of the Popeye dance craze and was picked up nationally by United Artists. James Booker: 'Don Robey came to New Orleans looking for an A & R man in 1959...He offered me good money but I wouldn't take the job... and anyway he hired (Edward) Frank. Frank and myself had seen a movie together called The Pusher. The drug pusher in the film's name was Gonzo'. The organ instrumental Gonzo came out on Peacock in November 1960 and reached #43 pop. Joe Barry was a Cajun from southern Louisiana, who recorded swamp pop for local label Jin in 1958. I'm a Fool to Care and Teardrops in My Heart were national hits on both R&B and pop charts in 1961. A 1962 spell at Huey P. Meaux's Princess label produced two singles, Little Papoose and Little Jewel of the Vieux Carre but there were no royalties for Barry. Meaux not only had a reputation for ripping off his artists; he also spent time in prison on paedophilia and child pornography charges. Lee Dorsey was working in a car body repair shop when he was offered the chance to cut Lonely Evening and Rock Pretty Baby for Cosimo’ Matassa’s label, Rex Records. Next stop was Banashak’s Valiant Records; Dorsey’s first release Lottie-Mo for them benefitted from a classy Harold Battiste production and got plenty of airplay locally, leading to a distribution deal with ABC. The Ray Charles-style piano playing on Lottie-Mo attracted the attention of Fury Records boss Bobby Robinson, who signed him up while on a promotion trip down South. Ya Ya went national in September 1961 (#7 Pop) followed closely by the superior Do Re Mi, not as successful but still a very creditable #27 Pop. The flip, People Gonna Talk, was a lazy New Orleans groove that foreshadowed the style Dorsey would adopt during his soulful period in the mid-sixties. Behind the 8 Ball was just as good but despite a powerful, brassy arrangement, somehow managed to miss out on a
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chart entry. Dorsey then drifted from label to label until Marshall Seehorn got him together with Allen Toussaint on Amy Records. More than a dash of New Orleans R&B can be detected in such classics as Working in a Coalmine, Holy Cow and Get Out Of My Life Woman. The End of New Orleans R&B According to Dr John, it was the unions who definitively brought down the curtain on the music scene in New Orleans in the early 60s by imposing hefty fines on unsegregated recording sessions in the city. The white and black unions, Local 174 and 496 were involved in turf wars over mixed sessions. As a result, many musicians left to find work on the West Coast, some to Memphis, others to New York. Another factor was the demise of all the major local labels. Ric and Ron folded in 1962 after the death of Joe Ruffino. Ace Records went into terminal decline following the liquidation of their distributors VeeJay, producing just a dozen or so records in 196364. Joe Banashak shut down the Minit label early in 1963 and Imperial was sold to Liberty later that year. Despite the Beatles and the Rolling Stones championing R&B in America, their arrival almost immediately led to the implosion of the entire genre, and soul music's emergence in 1964 was the final nail in the coffin of New Orleans R&B. Nick Duckett London 2014
Appendix The Musical Gumbo – some of the qualities that make New Orleans R&B so unique. Low, greasy, horn sections of baritone and tenor saxes playing chords in unison. Percussive, staccato, piano rhythms played in triplets and rolling piano arpeggios. A tendency to play R&B in a slower tempo with a more laid-back feel. A preference for traditional eight or sixteen-bar harmonic song structure over the twelve-bar blues format.
Guitar: Walter ‘Papoose’ Nelson WN, Smiley Lewis SL, Irving Banister IB, Justin Adams JA, Ernest McLean EM, Roy Montrell RM, Edgar Blanchard EB, George French GF, George Davis GD, Mac Rebennack MR Bass: Frank Fields FF, James Prevost JP, Clemont Tervalon CT, George Davis GD, Lloyd Lambert LL, Roland Cook RC, Chuck Badie CB Drums: Cornelius Coleman CC, Earl Palmer EP, Charles “Hungry” Williams CW, John Boudreaux JB, Oscar Moore OM, Robert French RF, Smokey Johnson SJ, James Black JB The Upsetters: Nathaniel Douglas: gtr; Olsie Robinson: bs; Clifford Burks: tenor sax; Wilbert Smith: tenor sax; Grady Gaines: tenor sax; Charles Connor: dms
Two-bar rhythmic phrasing similar to that found in the Caribbean, e.g. the Cuban son clave A unique rhythmic tension derived from bands playing mixed timing, i.e. straight time and shuffle time simultaneously
Discography Our incomplete discography lists the appearance on disc (where known) of the following important musicians Horns: Dave Bartholomew DB, Wendell Duconge WD, Frank Mitchell, FM, Buddy Hagans BH, Herb Hardesty HH, Joe Harris JH, Clarence Hall CH, David Lastie DL, Robert Parker RP, Julius Shakesnider JS, Alvin Red Tyler AT, Lee Allen LA, Big Boy Myles BBM, James Rivers JR, Wardell Quezergue WQ, Clarence Ford CF, Melvin Lastie ML, Nat Perrilliat NP
Bibliography John Broven, Rhythm & Blues In New Orleans Jeff Hannusch, The Soul Of New Orleans Jeff Hannusch, I Hear You Knocking Dr. John, Under a Hoodoo Moon Tony Scherman, Backbeat Rick Coleman, Blue Monday Ernest Borneman, Creole Echoes Antoon Aukes, Second Line Don Rouse, New Orleans Jazz and Caribbean Music Al Rose, Storyville, New Orleans Lichtenstein and Danker Musical Gumbo: The Music of New Orleans
Piano: Fats Domino FD, Huey ‘Piano’ Smith HS, Edward Frank EF, Little Richard LR, Edwin Bocage EB, Salvador Doucette SD, Roy Byrd RB, Art Neville AN, Warren Myles WM, Allen Toussaint AT, James Booker JB,
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The Rhythms Try to speak aloud the rhythm of the beats ∥1 &¦2 &¦ 3 &¦ 4 &∥ while tapping the accented beats (♪) with your hands. Start slowly, repeat several times, speeding up gradually, then listen to the tracks. Some of the names for these rhythms are my own. Each bar has ∥at the beginning and end and the individual beats in the bar are separated by ¦ (♪Quarter note pulse = walking bass one note per bar) Common Patterns in Jazz and R&B Swing (triplet/swing time)tss t-t tss t-t ∥ ¦ ♪ ♪ ¦ ¦ ♪ ♪ ∥ Oke-She-Moke-She-Pop (Joe Turner 1953); Lawdy Miss Clawdy (Lloyd Price 1952) Jazz/R&B Backbeat ∥ ¦ ♪ ¦ ¦ ♪ ∥ Big Mamou (Smiley Lewis 1953); Ain’t It A Shame (Fats Domino 1955) Latin Patterns derived from 1st bar of the Son Clave Tresillo (Rumba) ∥♪ ∥וּ ♪¦ וּ וּ¦ ♪ וּ ¦ וּ New Orleans Joys (Jelly Roll Morton 1923); Witchcraft (Spiders 1955) Charleston ∥♪ ∥וּ וּ ¦וּ וּ ¦ ♪וּ ¦ וּ Black Snake Blues (King Oliver 1927 middle eight) Two-bar patterns derived from whole of the Son Clave Son Clave ∥♪ ∥וּ וּ ¦וּ ♪ ¦וּ ♪ ¦ וּ וּ ∥וּ ♪ ¦ וּ וּ¦ ♪ וּ ¦ וּ Besame Mucho (Edmund Hall 1944); Carnival Day (Dave Bartholomew 1950) New Orleans Double Downbeat ∥♪ ∥וּ♪ ¦וּ ♪¦ ♪ וּ¦ ♪ ♪∥♪ וּ ¦ וּ ♪¦ ♪ וּ¦ וּ Lady Be Good (Eureka Brass Band 1951) New Orleans Second Line Two-Beat ∥♪ ∥וּ ♪¦ וּ וּ¦ ♪ וּ¦ וּ ♪ ∥וּ וּ ¦ וּ ♪ ¦ וּ וּ ¦וּ Big Noise From Winnetka (Bauduc/Haggart 1938); 3times 7 =21(Jewel King 1949)
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Ragtime (1) ∥∥וּ וּ¦ וּ וּ¦ ♪ וּ ¦ וּ ♪ ∥וּ וּ ¦♪ וּ ¦ וּ ♪ ¦ וּ וּ Hold That Tiger, I Got Rhythm Ragtime (2) ∥וּ וּ ¦וּ וּ ¦ ♪ ♪ ¦ וּ ♪∥וּ וּ ¦♪ ♪ ¦וּ ♪ ¦ וּ וּ Travelin’ Blues (Lovie Austin 1926); Maple Leaf Rag; We Like Mambo (Huey Piano Smith 1955) New Orleans R&B* ∥ ♪ ∥ וּ ♪ ¦ וּ וּ ¦ ♪ וּ ¦ וּover ∥¦¦¦∥
Mardi Gras In New Orleans (Professor Longhair 1950); Jock-A-Mo (Sugar Boy Crawford 1954) (*complex rhythm with syncopated marching beats superimposed over rumba or son clave pattern) Thanks to Antoon Aukes and also to Mandy Bolster for editing suggestions
Roy Brown
Shirley & Lee
Clarence Garlow
Fats Domino
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Tommy Ridgley
Little Richard
Professor Longhair
Paul Gayten
Bobby Marchan
Guitar Slim
Compilation & Sleeve Notes Nick Duckett Consultant Stewart Tippett
