Of the many different names the Champ and Brownie McGhee recorded under in the late 40s, it's difficult to beat Meat Head Johnson and the Blues Hounds (although I will also give it up for Duke Bayou and the Mystic Six). It's pretty difficult to beat Meat Head's recordings, too, mainly because not only does Brownie McGhee play guitar on them, he's joined by spo-dee-o-dee loving brother Stick.
Barrel House Mama
The song "Old Old Woman" was recorded under the name "Old Woman Blues" for Apollo, but the Meat Head version is better - better lyrical delivery and wilder guitar. Get your morning exercise!
As the rhythm and blues era continued throughout the 40s, Champion Jack continued to ply his trade and in 1949 made half a dozen records for the famous New York based Apollo label. Some of the most interesting of these were made with "Big Chief Ellis and his Blues All Stars".
Here's a couple of hot ones.
Deacon's Party
Just Plain Tired
This weekend I'll be posting some tracks Jack recorded under other names in the 50s and then we'll be back to the long-windedness on Monday, as Jack enters the 45 era with three stellar runs on Robin, King and Groove.
November, 1941 was Jack Dupree's last recording session until 1944. He spent two of the intervening years in a Japanese POW camp.
According to Graham Reid, who published an interview with Dupree on his Elsewhere blog, his time as a prisoner of war was possibly more hospitable than being in the actual army.
"Black people lived good because they weren't put with the whites. We cooked for ourselves and played ball. The Japanese people were funny. They thought Americans were getting black slaves from Africa to fight for them so they didn't see they were fighting us."
And, according to John Orr: "I cooked for the [Japanese] officers, so I had to eat what they ate, so it wouldn't be poisoned. I had help and everything, a nice room, a bottle of cognac a month, cigars, cigarettes -- it was just like working in a hotel, but with no place to go."
Upon returning from the war, Dupree did a couple of solo dates for the Joe Davis label. To my ears the most interesting of these is "F.D.R. Blues", the first of Jack's tributes to historical figures he admired. He'd eventually toast people like Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, and Big Bill Broonzy in memorial songs. I don't know that much has been made about CJD's dignity in the face of racial adversity in his songs. I love how he says in this one, "He was a good man - he was a credit to our race."
Dupree's recordings for Joe Davis milk a lot of the same territory as his OKeh sides, but things get, to my own tastes, considerably more exciting when he moved to the Continental label later in '45. For one thing, he gets the first of his significant guitarist collaborators, Brownie McGhee. McGhee and Dupree would work together, with and without McGhee's other collaborator, Sonny Terry, for the next ten years.
As we have noted in the past, Dupree was not perhaps the most technically skilled pianist ever to lay his elbows down on 12 bars. He also has a limited number of song structures which get repurposed to great effect. His best records, especially his fast ones, tend to have a sympathetic string-man to help with the arrangements and to add color to his sounds. Near as I can tell, Dupree's most sympathetic guitar accompanists were McGhee, Mickey Baker (King, GNP, Decca), Larry Dale (Groove, Atlantic), and, believe it or not, Groundhog T.S. McPhee, all of whom we'll hear more from later in the month. All of these guys are on recordings that stand out from the rest of the CJD pack, not only in terms of sonic excitement, but also in the energy and focus of CJD's performance. I think the man liked him some electric guitar. Check out the way he, McGhee and bassist Count Edmonson make mincemeat out of the "Dupree Shake Dance" template on "Let's Have a Ball".
PLAY ME SOME!
In addition to adding some guitar flash, Dupree really turns up the raunch on his double entendré. His first record for Continental features "I Think You Need a Shot" on the b-side. This is the first version of "Bad Blood" on Blues from the Gutter, but it is lyrically even more lascivious than that better known (and already pretty filthy) version.
Throw your legs up on the wall!
Special shout-out to 9th Ward Jukebox, an amazingly valuable internet resource with unflaggingly great taste. Saved me a lot of uploading time.
In the interest of further illustration of Champion Jack's awesomely inaccurate left hand as a piano player, check out this cover of Louis Jordan's "Early in the Morning", here called "Too Early in the Morning", from one of his mid-60's albums, New Orleans to Chicago. While the album cover bills a ton of British Blues guitarists, this performance is solo, except maybe for the drum break, which may or may not be a washboard or CJD beating on his piano. I suspect that the fumbling nature of this recording may have to do with Jack being fairly well lubricated at the time it was recorded, but it swings like a dazed boxer in a ring who doesn't know any better than to fall down.
It was sixty-four years ago today, Red Foley and company headed into a Nashville studio and cut the timeless Tennessee Border, written by George Morgan. Teenaged steel guitarist Billy Robinson is not only still kicking, he still gigs occasionally in Nashville, as he did a few weeks ago, playing with Chris Scruggs & His Air Castle All Stars, a truly world class outfit, at a west Nashville establishment called the Stone Fox.
The information below appears courtesy of Bear Family records:
February 6, 1949; Castle Studio at the Tulane Hotel, 206 8th Avenue, Nashville, TN. Producer: Paul Cohen
If I were in NYC, I would most certainly plan on dropping by the Yossi Milo gallery in Chelsea to check out the display of architectural and industrial photographs taken by Ezra Stoller. More information about Stoller and his wonderful work can be found in this New York Times article.
Who would thunk it? This wacky thing about ethno-geographic phenotypes? The whole school has been given new life with the discovery that two immortal Italo-Americans of conspicuously similar facial features sprang forth from the same good earth: L.A., in the late Twenties-early Thirties. Namely Nino Tempo [ne Lo Tempio], famed Spector cohort and star sibling of April Stevens (Hoots mon! Here they are, killin’ in kilts on TV’s Shivaree: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luPRSXyaItU ), and Don Gordon (ne Guadagno), perennial sidekick/heavy. He was the former in McQueen’s Bullitt, the latter in Den Hopper’s “punk” flick Out of the Blue. Don’s cheekbones beat Nino’s, but both work that semi-perpendicular hairline riff on a receding Caesar frame. Here’s Gordon, from a 1965 Kraft Mystery Theater, wrestling a rival to the mat. He shows up at around 6 minutes into the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgIs2kWGips .
Jack wound up his career as a boxer in Indianapolis, where he took a job as a bouncer at Sea Ferguson's Cotton Club. It was here he met Leroy Carr, who influenced Jack's New Orleans barrelhouse piano with his more uptown, nascent Chicago Blues style. It was a combination of these two styles that made up his playing for most of the rest of his career. He travelled to Chicago, where, according to the song "See My Milk Cow", he met Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red, and Jazz Gillum, who helped him get his first recording contract, with OKeh. He made his first recording in 1940 and is often credited with being the first New Orleans blues pianist to be recorded.
Jack talks about his early career as a musician at the start of "See My Milk Cow", ca. 1968
Top row: Jazz Gillum, Tampa Red, Scrapper Blackwell
Bottom row: Jack Dupree, Big Bill Broonzy
in front - Tampa Red's whiskey drinking dog.
His first release was "Warehouse Man Blues," a song that combines a number of elements that would be cycled and recycled throughout his work. It's pretty funny, but it's also a striking bit of social commentary about being black and poor in a white man's world. CJD would address these issues more fully in the 60s - it was pretty much why he abandoned the United States for England and mainland Europe.
"My grandma left this morning with a basket in her hand she going to the warehouse to see the warehouse man she got down to the warehouse, and white folks said 'ain't no use, the governor ain't giving away nothin' but that canned grapefruit juice.' It's a low down dirty shame the way these projects doin. Now Uncle Sam paid the men that bonus You know that was mighty fine You fill them street walkin' women up with that moonlight wine You spent all your money, you spent it mighty fast Now this winter breeze bout to jam you with a . . . yeah! yeah! Don't you know the relief is closing down? It's a low down shame the way they really do."
(Paid for) sex, booze, poverty, righteous anger at injustice, double entendre, a woman who has mother in her name that is not quite the singer's mother - it's just about all there, except for the heroin and the cabbage. And the shaking.
Jack cut enough tracks to release four records on his first date in 1940, including the utterly stompin' "Cabbage Greens" and "New Low Down Dog", an early version of "Stumbling Block", one of his best known and loved rockers.
He was back six months later for another one, when he unleashed the "Dupree Shake Dance" and a song that would have a huge influence on the sound of New Orleans rhythm and blues (and by extension rock and roll in general), "Junker Blues".
You hear a lot about the key piano professors of New Orleans, and too often Jack Dupree does not get mentioned on the list. But his rolling figures and general acceptance of all facets of human behavior are at the heart of New Orleans music. Fats Domino would take this song, remove all of the references to drugs and squalor (not easy, since that's just about all there is to the lyrics), and create "The Fat Man" in 1949, a song that's often one of those many "first rock and roll" songs you hear so much about. So, by logical extension, in this month's version of the story, rock and roll was created on a bed of needles, reefer, and cocaine. Something to keep in mind. "Junker's Blues" plays an important part in another key development in the history of rock and roll, but we'll get to that in a couple of weeks.
vs.
"Dupree Shake Dance" is another key piece of early rock and roll spirit, mainly because it's such a racket. One thing about Champion Jack Dupree - he does not play with the ease of other New Orleans pianists like Professor Longhair on one side or Jelly Roll Morton on the other. And it's his enthusiastic approximation of a sophisticated boogie that provides a great transition from jazz to rhythm and blues. He beats the crap out of the keys, playing like he still has his boxing gloves on, going a few rounds with the piano and creating an imprecise splatter of left handed clams that adds a righteous element of chaos to his faster boogies. This leaves him sometimes on the nose wrinkling end of blues critic-type assessment of his work, but for the purposes of rock and roll it is completely on point - you can't guess exactly where his fingers are going to fall, and the whole mess ends up sounding like an Esquerita solo or something.
Jack recorded one more session for OKeh, in November of 1941. This session included another New Orleans styled r&b number, "Heavy Heart Blues", and some very cool early Chicago style blues which include the first appearance of electric guitar on his records.
His fledgling musical career was interrupted, however, by his first trip overseas, to serve time in World War II. He wouldn't pick up his musical career again until 1944.
Champion Jack Dupree made records for over 50 years. His first sides came out on the OKeh label in 1930, and his last album was released in 1992. In the 40s he cut dozens of single sides for about as many labels - including several under different names (like Meat Head Johnson). Most of these only came out on 78, and were largely unavailable in any other form until the CD-era. He made lots of LPs for a variety of European labels after moving there in the early 60s, and made one of the best blues albums ever for Atlantic. Most of the 45s he recorded were cut from '53 - '59, for Robin, Groove, and King. The Euporean blues afficianado for whom he recorded in the 60s seems to have favored the long player.
The jist is that CJD made a LOT of records. He was the John Lee Hooker of barrelhouse piano (in more ways than one, since some of his best recordings are just him, his piano and his stomp). He was always happy to reinvent one or more of his Dupree specials for whoever might be willing to give him some bread. Like John Lee, he got thrown in with an awful lot of younger, white blues players in the 60s, with similar mixed results. But he made records both rockin' and righteous all his life, he tells great autobiographical stories in a lot of his songs, and he casts a shadow over the history of enough Ichiban-oriented interests to keep us amused for a month. Plus he's hilarious.
And he knows his Shakespeare
Jack Dupree was born in New Orleans in 1909 or 1910. Like Louis Armstrong, he claimed to have been born on the 4th of July, and like Armstrong, that claim has proven to be inaccurate. Also like Louis Armstrong, he was raised in New Orleans' Home for Colored Waifs, after he lost his parents in a house or store fire that may or may not have been set by the Ku Klux Klan. Jack talks about this on his song "The Death of Louis Armstrong" and makes reference to the fire in a song called .
Jack taught himself to play piano after the orphanage acquired one from the Salvation Army, and apprenticed in the juke joints with Willie Hall, also known as Drive 'Em Down, who apparently taught him one of his signature numbers, "Junker's Blues". He reminisces about Drive 'Em Down at the start of the song "Workhouse Blues", from an early 60s session for Storyville, recorded in Denmark.
In the 30s he split New Orleans for Detroit, where he became a boxer. Here he earned, either honorably or ironically, the nickname "Champion", depending on whose stories you believe. One imagines he got sick of hitting something that hit back, so he moved to Chicago at the start of the 40s and started playing the piano again.
sorry about so many slow songs today - we'll get to boogie plenty by month's end . . . Relative to his large body of work and the colorfulness of his life, there does not seem to be a lot of information about Champion Jack Dupree out there. He is not the subject of any biographies, and he doesn't get a lot of mention in the blues history books I've checked. Francis Davis's History of the Blues offers a useful if slightly condescending three page biographical overview. This blog post has a great interview with CJD and will be returned to frequently this month. Big thanks to the exhaustive Champion Jack Dupree discography here. Pretty much my only tether to reality this month.
KICK OFF - Johnny Ray Gomez & the U-Neeks
FOOTBALL ROCK - Jack Hammer
KILLER McBASH - The Weird-Ohs
DO THE FOOTBALL - Acres of Grass
FOOTBALL - Mickey & the Soul Generation
IT'S FOOTBALL BABY - Stix of Dynamite
February is Champion Jack Dupree month. But Jack Dupree wants us all to take the weekend off and get up to really shameful antics so we can talk about them ruminatively while we play a slow 12 bar blues and stomp our feet. Be prepared for vamps 'til Monday. Lord knows CJD knew how to vamp.
Over the last few weeks, some, if not none, of you Rock & Soul Ichiban Radio listeners may have been wondering what happened to my live Thursday show. Well, there has been a programming shake-up on WFMU's alternate webstreams, with Ichiban returning to its roots streaming obscure bizarro world hits-that-missed from the 50s and 60s. The reasons are complicated and not particularly interesting; the upshot is that my show, starting next Thursday February 7th, will be heard at a similar bat-time and different bat-channel: 2 to 4 PM Eastern Standard Time, Thursdays on WFMU's Give The Drummer Radio stream. Some Ichiban listeners may remember our sister stream GTDR from when they saved our asses in the dark days after Hurricane Sandy. Give The Drummer Radio is similar to Ichiban in that it's a 24-hour streaming jukebox (curated by WFMU veteran Doug Schulkind from his home in Pittsburgh), but with more live programming. Click here for the full schedule.
For those of you unfamiliar with my show, the playlists to date can be found here. Expect more of the same.
